Histogram-kernel error and its application for bin width selection in histograms

Histogram and kernel estimators are usually regarded as the two main classical data-based nonparametric tools to estimate the underlying density functions for some given data sets. In this paper we will integrate them and define a histogram-kernel error based on the integrated square error between histogram and binned kernel density estimator, and then exploit its asymptotic properties. Just as indicated in this paper, the histogram-kernel error only depends on the choice of bin width and the data for the given prior kernel densities. The asymptotic optimal bin width is derived by minimizing the mean histogram-kernel error. By comparing with Scott’s optimal bin width formula for a histogram, a new method is proposed to construct the data-based histogram without knowledge of the underlying density function. Monte Carlo study is used to verify the usefulness of our method for different kinds of density functions and sample sizes.