An Exact Algorithm for Weighted-Mean Trimmed Regions in Any Dimension

Trimmed regions are a powerful tool of multivariate data analysis. They describe a probability distribution in Euclidean d-space regarding location, dispersion, and shape, and they order multivariate data with respect to their centrality. Dyckerhoff and Mosler (2011) have introduced the class of wei...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pael Bazovkin, Karl Mosler
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Foundation for Open Access Statistics 2012-04-01
Series:Journal of Statistical Software
Subjects:
C++
R
Online Access:http://www.jstatsoft.org/v47/i13/paper
Description
Summary:Trimmed regions are a powerful tool of multivariate data analysis. They describe a probability distribution in Euclidean d-space regarding location, dispersion, and shape, and they order multivariate data with respect to their centrality. Dyckerhoff and Mosler (2011) have introduced the class of weighted-mean trimmed regions, which possess attrac- tive properties regarding continuity, subadditivity, and monotonicity.We present an exact algorithm to compute the weighted-mean trimmed regions of a given data cloud in arbitrary dimension d. These trimmed regions are convex polytopes in Rd. To calculate them, the algorithm builds on methods from computational geometry. A characterization of a region’s facets is used, and information about the adjacency of the facets is extracted from the data. A key problem consists in ordering the facets. It is solved by the introduction of a tree-based order, by which the whole surface can be traversed efficiently with the minimal number of computations. The algorithm has been programmed in C++ and is available as the R package WMTregions.
ISSN:1548-7660