Optimal discriminant functions for normal populations

A class of discriminant rules which includes Fisher’s linear discriminant function and the likelihood ratio criterion is defined. Using asymptotic expansions of the distributions of the discriminant functions in this class, we derive a formula for cut-off points which satisfy some conditions on misclassification probabilities, and derive the optimal rules for some criteria. Some numerical experiments are carried out to examine the performance of the optimal rules for finite numbers of samples.     

On improved estimation of normal precision matrix and discriminant coefficients

The problem of estimating the precision matrix of a multivariate normal distribution model is considered with respect to a quadratic loss function. A number of covariance estimators originally intended for a variety of loss functions are adapted so as to obtain alternative estimators of the precision matrix. It is shown that the alternative estimators have analytically smaller risks than the unbiased estimator of the precision matrix. Through numerical studies of risk values, it is shown that the new estimators have substantial reduction in risk. In addition, we consider the problem of the estimation of discriminant coefficients, which arises in linear discriminant analysis when Fisher's linear discriminant function is viewed as the posterior log-odds under the assumption that two classes differ in mean but have a common covariance matrix. The above method is also adapted for this problem in order to obtain improved estimators of the discriminant coefficients under the quadratic loss function. Furthermore, a numerical study is undertaken to compare the properties of a collection of alternatives to the “unbiased” estimator of the discriminant coefficients.     

Robust estimation in a nonlinear cointegration model

This paper considers the nonparametric M-estimator in a nonlinear cointegration type model. The local time density argument, which was developed by Phillips and Park (1998) [6] and Wang and Phillips (2009) [9], is applied to establish the asymptotic theory for the nonparametric M-estimator. The weak consistency and the asymptotic distribution of the proposed estimator are established under mild conditions. Meanwhile, the asymptotic distribution of the local least squares estimator and the local least absolute distance estimator can be obtained as applications of our main results. Furthermore, an iterated procedure for obtaining the nonparametric M-estimator and a cross-validation bandwidth selection method are discussed, and some numerical examples are provided to show that the proposed methods perform well in the finite sample case.     

A test for additional information in canonical correlation analysis

Summary In canonical correlation analysis a hypothesis concerning the relevance of a subset of variables from each of the two given variable sets is formulated. The likelihood ratio statistic for the hypothesis and an asymptotic expansion for its null distribution are obtained. In discriminant analysis various alternative forms of a hypothesis concerning the relevance of a specified variable subset are also discussed.     

Effective PCA for high-dimension, low-sample-size data with noise reduction via geometric representations

In this article, we propose a new estimation methodology to deal with PCA for high-dimension, low-sample-size (HDLSS) data. We first show that HDLSS datasets have different geometric representations depending on whether a ρ-mixing-type dependency appears in variables or not. When the ρ-mixing-type dependency appears in variables, the HDLSS data converge to an n-dimensional surface of unit sphere with increasing dimension. We pay special attention to this phenomenon. We propose a method called the noise-reduction methodology to estimate eigenvalues of a HDLSS dataset. We show that the eigenvalue estimator holds consistency properties along with its limiting distribution in HDLSS context. We consider consistency properties of PC directions. We apply the noise-reduction methodology to estimating PC scores. We also give an application in the discriminant analysis for HDLSS datasets by using the inverse covariance matrix estimator induced by the noise-reduction methodology.     

A note on the structure of the quadratic subspace in discriminant analysis

This paper explores some properties of the quadratic subspace, a tool for dimension reduction in discriminant analysis ( [Velilla, 2008] and [Velilla, 2010]). This linear manifold has a fairly complex structure, and it may sometimes include components with both mean and covariance separation properties. In this case, an assumption of orthogonality between the leading location directions and the bulk of the dispersion subspaces can help to find an adequate directional representation of it in practice. Two real data sets are analyzed.     

Predictivistic characterizations of multivariate student-t models

De Finetti style theorems characterize models (predictive distributions) as mixtures of the likelihood function and the prior distribution, beginning from some judgment of invariance about observable quantities. The likelihood function generally has its functional form identified from invariance assumptions only. However, we need additional conditions on observable quantities (typically, assumptions on conditional expectations) to identify the prior distribution. In this paper, we consider some well-known invariance assumptions and establish additional conditions on observable quantities in order to obtain a predictivistic characterization of the multivariate and matrix-variate Student-t distributions as well as for the Student-t linear model. As a byproduct, a characterization for the Pearson type II distribution is provided.     

Minimum Hellinger distance estimation in a two-sample semiparametric model

We investigate the estimation problem of parameters in a two-sample semiparametric model. Specifically, let X₁,…,X_n be a sample from a population with distribution function G and density function g. Independent of the X_i’s, let Z₁,…,Z_m be another random sample with distribution function H and density function h(x)=exp[α+r(x)β]g(x), where α and β are unknown parameters of interest and g is an unknown density. This model has wide applications in logistic discriminant analysis, case-control studies, and analysis of receiver operating characteristic curves. Furthermore, it can be considered as a biased sampling model with weight function depending on unknown parameters. In this paper, we construct minimum Hellinger distance estimators of α and β. The proposed estimators are chosen to minimize the Hellinger distance between a semiparametric model and a nonparametric density estimator. Theoretical properties such as the existence, strong consistency and asymptotic normality are investigated. Robustness of proposed estimators is also examined using a Monte Carlo study.     

Nonparametric methods for unbalanced multivariate data and many factor levels

We propose different nonparametric tests for multivariate data and derive their asymptotic distribution for unbalanced designs in which the number of factor levels tends to infinity (large a, small n_i case). Quasi gratis, some new parametric multivariate tests suitable for the large a asymptotic case are also obtained. Finite sample performances are investigated and compared in a simulation study. The nonparametric tests are based on separate rankings for the different variables. In the presence of outliers, the proposed nonparametric methods have better power than their parametric counterparts. Application of the new tests is demonstrated using data from plant pathology.     

Robust Bayesian prediction and estimation under a squared log error loss function

Robust Bayesian analysis is concerned with the problem of making decisions about some future observation or an unknown parameter, when the prior distribution belongs to a class Γ instead of being specified exactly. In this paper, the problem of robust Bayesian prediction and estimation under a squared log error loss function is considered. We find the posterior regret Γ-minimax predictor and estimator in a general class of distributions. Furthermore, we construct the conditional Γ-minimax, most stable and least sensitive prediction and estimation in a gamma model. A prequential analysis is carried out by using a simulation study to compare these predictors.     

Asymptotic distributions of robust shape matrices and scales

It has been frequently observed in the literature that many multivariate statistical methods require the covariance or dispersion matrix Σ of an elliptical distribution only up to some scaling constant. If the topic of interest is not the scale but only the shape of the elliptical distribution, it is not meaningful to focus on the asymptotic distribution of an estimator for Σ or another matrix Γ∝Σ. In the present work, robust estimators for the shape matrix and the associated scale are investigated. Explicit expressions for their joint asymptotic distributions are derived. It turns out that if the joint asymptotic distribution is normal, the estimators presented are asymptotically independent for one and only one specific choice of the scale function. If it is non-normal (this holds for example if the estimators for the shape matrix and scale are based on the minimum volume ellipsoid estimator) only the scale function presented leads to asymptotically uncorrelated estimators. This is a generalization of a result obtained by Paindaveine [D. Paindaveine, A canonical definition of shape, Statistics and Probability Letters 78 (2008) 2240-2247] in the context of local asymptotic normality theory.     

On the structure of the quadratic subspace in discriminant analysis

The concept of quadratic subspace is introduced as a helpful tool for dimension reduction in quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). It is argued that an adequate representation of the quadratic subspace may lead to better methods for both data representation and classification. Several theoretical results describe the structure of the quadratic subspace, that is shown to contain some of the subspaces previously proposed in the literature for finding differences between the class means and covariances. A suitable assumption of orthogonality between location and dispersion subspaces allows us to derive a convenient reduced version of the full QDA rule. The behavior of these ideas in practice is illustrated with three real data examples.     

Tail dependence for multivariate t -copulas and its monotonicity

The tail dependence indexes of a multivariate distribution describe the amount of dependence in the upper right tail or lower left tail of the distribution and can be used to analyse the dependence among extremal random events. This paper examines the tail dependence of multivariate t-distributions whose copulas are not explicitly accessible. The tractable formulas of tail dependence indexes of a multivariate t-distribution are derived in terms of the joint moments of its underlying multivariate normal distribution, and the monotonicity properties of these indexes with respect to the distribution parameters are established. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the results.     

On the distribution of the ratio of the largest eigenvalue to the trace of a Wishart matrix

The ratio of the largest eigenvalue divided by the trace of a p×p random Wishart matrix with n degrees of freedom and an identity covariance matrix plays an important role in various hypothesis testing problems, both in statistics and in signal processing. In this paper we derive an approximate explicit expression for the distribution of this ratio, by considering the joint limit as both p,n→∞ with p/n→c. Our analysis reveals that even though asymptotically in this limit the ratio follows a Tracy-Widom (TW) distribution, one of the leading error terms depends on the second derivative of the TW distribution, and is non-negligible for practical values of p, in particular for determining tail probabilities. We thus propose to explicitly include this term in the approximate distribution for the ratio. We illustrate empirically using simulations that adding this term to the TW distribution yields a quite accurate expression to the empirical distribution of the ratio, even for small values of p,n.     

On depth measures and dual statistics. A methodology for dealing with general data

A general depth measure, based on the use of one-dimensional linear continuous projections, is proposed. The applicability of this idea in different statistical setups (including inference in functional data analysis, image analysis and classification) is discussed. A special emphasis is made on the possible usefulness of this method in some statistical problems where the data are elements of a Banach space.The asymptotic properties of the empirical approximation of the proposed depth measure are investigated. In particular, its asymptotic distribution is obtained through U-statistics techniques. The practical aspects of these ideas are discussed through a small simulation study and a real-data example.     

Preserving multivariate dispersion: An application to the Wishart distribution

Univariate dispersive ordering has been extensively characterized by many authors over the last two decades. However, the multivariate version lacks extensive analysis. In this paper, sufficient and necessary conditions are given to preserve the strong multivariate dispersion order through properties of the corresponding transformation. Finally, these results are applied to the Wishart distribution which can be viewed as “the spread of the dispersion”.     

Eigenvectors of a kurtosis matrix as interesting directions to reveal cluster structure

In this paper we study the properties of a kurtosis matrix and propose its eigenvectors as interesting directions to reveal the possible cluster structure of a data set. Under a mixture of elliptical distributions with proportional scatter matrix, it is shown that a subset of the eigenvectors of the fourth-order moment matrix corresponds to Fisher’s linear discriminant subspace. The eigenvectors of the estimated kurtosis matrix are consistent estimators of this subspace and its calculation is easy to implement and computationally efficient, which is particularly favourable when the ratio n/p is large.     

Wishart ratios with dependent structure: New members of the bimatrix beta type IV

In multivariate statistics under normality, the problems of interest are random covariance matrices (known as Wishart matrices) and “ratios” of Wishart matrices that arise in multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) (see 24). The bimatrix variate beta type IV distribution (also known in the literature as bimatrix variate generalised beta; matrix variate generalization of a bivariate beta type I) arises from “ratios” of Wishart matrices. In this paper, we add a further independent Wishart random variate to the “denominator” of one of the ratios; this results in deriving the exact expression for the density function of the bimatrix variate extended beta type IV distribution. The latter leads to the proposal of the bimatrix variate extended F distribution. Some interesting characteristics of these newly introduced bimatrix distributions are explored. Lastly, we focus on the bivariate extended beta type IV distribution (that is an extension of bivariate Jones’ beta) with emphasis on P(X₁<X₂) where X₁ is the random stress variate and X₂ is the random strength variate.     

Results in statistical discriminant analysis: a review of the former Soviet Union literature

Much work in discriminant analysis and statistical pattern recognition has been performed in the former Soviet Union. However, most results derived by former Soviet Union researchers are unknown to statisticians and statistical pattern recognition researchers in the West. We attempt to give a succinct overview of important contributions by Soviet Block researchers to several topics in the discriminant analysis literature concerning the small training-sample size problem. We also include a partial review of corresponding work done in the West.     

A new statistical model for random unit vectors

This paper proposes a new statistical model for symmetric axial directional data in dimension p. This proposal is an alternative to the Bingham distribution and to the angular central Gaussian family. The statistical properties for this model are presented. An explicit form for its normalizing constant is given and some moments and limiting distributions are derived. The proposed density is shown to apply to the modeling of 3×3 rotation matrices by representing them as quaternions, which are unit vectors in . The moment estimators of the parameters of the new model are calculated; explicit expressions for their sampling variances are given. The analysis of data measuring the posture of the right arm of subjects performing a drilling task illustrates the application of the proposed model.