No abstract

We investigate general kernel density derivative estimators, that is, kernel estimators of multivariate density derivative functions using general (or unconstrained) bandwidth matrix selectors. These density derivative estimators have been relatively less well researched than their density estimator analogues. A major obstacle for progress has been the intractability of the matrix analysis when treating higher order multivariate derivatives. With an alternative vectorization of these higher order derivatives, these mathematical intractabilities are surmounted in an elegant and unified framework. The finite sample and asymptotic analysis of squared errors for density estimators are generalized to density derivative estimators. Moreover, we are able to exhibit a closed form expression for a normal scale bandwidth matrix for density derivative estimators. These normal scale bandwidths are employed in a numerical study to demonstrate the gain in performance of unconstrained selectors over their constrained counterparts.

Asymptotic MISE, Multivariate kernel density estimation, Plug-in method, Pre-sphering, Unconstrained bandwidth selectors, 62G07,

Important information concerning a multivariate data set, such as clusters and modal regions, is contained in the derivatives of the probability density function. Despite this importance, nonparametric estimation of higher order derivatives of the density functions have received only relatively scant attention. Kernel estimators of density functions are widely used as they exhibit excellent theoretical and practical properties, though their generalization to density derivatives has progressed more slowly due to the mathematical intractabilities encountered in the crucial problem of bandwidth (or smoothing parameter) selection. This paper presents the first fully automatic, databased bandwidth selectors for multivariate kernel density derivative estimators. This is achieved by synthesizing recent advances in matrix analytic theory which allow mathematically and computationally tractable representations of higher order derivatives of multivariate vector valued functions. The theoretical asymptotic properties as well as the finite sample behaviour of the proposed selectors are studied. In addition, we explore in detail the applications of the new data-driven methods for two other statistical problems: clustering and bump hunting. The introduced techniques are combined with the mean shift algorithm to develop novel automatic, nonparametric clustering procedures which are shown to outperform mixture-model cluster analysis and other recent nonparametric approaches in practice. Furthermore, the advantage of the use of smoothing parameters designed for density derivative estimation for feature significance analysis for bump hunting is illustrated with a real data example.

Despite its popularity, it is widely recognized that the investigation of some theoretical aspects of clustering has been relatively sparse. One of the main reasons for this lack of theoretical results is surely the fact that, whereas for other statistical problems the theoretical population goal is clearly defined (as in regression or classification), for some of the clustering methodologies it is difficult to specify the population goal to which the data-based clustering algorithms should try to get close. This paper aims to provide some insight into the theoretical foundations of clustering by focusing on two main objectives: to provide an explicit formulation for the ideal population goal of the modal clustering methodology, which understands clusters as regions of high density; and to present two new loss functions, applicable in fact to any clustering methodology, to evaluate the performance of a data-based clustering algorithm with respect to the ideal population goal. In particular, it is shown that only mild conditions on a sequence of density estimators are needed to ensure that the sequence of modal clusterings that they induce is consistent.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-STS526 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.138