[BioC] lowess vs. loess

[nataraja at mit.edu]

Hello!  I have noticed a distinction being made
between lowess and loess for the normalization
of microarray data, but I'm not quite clear about
what the difference is between the two techniques.
>From William Cleveland's website, it seems that the
major difference is that lowess uses only one
predictor variable, whereas loess can be used with
more than one predictor:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/smoothsoft.html
For intensity-based normalization (one predictor) wouldn't
the two algorithms boil down to the same thing?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!

Thank you,
Sripriya Natarajan
Graduate Student, Center for Vascular Biology
Dept. of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital