void	g07gac (Integer n, Integer p, const double y[], double mean, double var, Integer iout[], Integer niout, Integer ldiff, double diff[], double llamb[], NagError fail)

The function may be called by the names: g07gac, nag_univar_outlier_peirce_1var or nag_outlier_peirce.

3 Description

g07gac flags outlying values in data using Peirce's criterion. Let

$y$ denote a vector of $n$ observations (for example the residuals) obtained from a model with $p$ parameters,
$m$ denote the number of potential outlying values,
$μ$ and $σ^{2}$ denote the mean and variance of $y$ respectively,
$\tilde{y}$ denote a vector of length $n - m$ constructed by dropping the $m$ values from $y$ with the largest value of $|y_{i} - μ|$ ,
${\tilde{σ}}^{2}$ denote the (unknown) variance of $\tilde{y}$ ,
$λ$ denote the ratio of $\tilde{σ}$ and $σ$ with $λ = \frac{\tilde{σ}}{σ}$ .

Peirce's method flags

y_{i}

as a potential outlier if

|y_{i} - μ| \geq x

, where

x = σ^{2} z

and

z

is obtained from the solution of

R^{m} = λ^{m - n} \frac{m^{m} {(n - m)}^{n - m}}{n^{n}}

(1)

where

R = 2 \exp ((\frac{z^{2} - 1}{2}) (1 - Φ (z)))

(2)

and

Φ

is the cumulative distribution function for the standard Normal distribution.

{\tilde{σ}}^{2}

is unknown an assumption is made that the relationship between

{\tilde{σ}}^{2}

and

σ^{2}

, hence

λ

, depends only on the sum of squares of the rejected observations and the ratio estimated as

λ^{2} = \frac{n - p - m z^{2}}{n - p - m}

which gives

z^{2} = 1 + \frac{n - p - m}{m} (1 - λ^{2})

(3)

A value for the cutoff

x

is calculated iteratively. An initial value of

R = 0.2

is used and a value of

λ

is estimated using equation (1). Equation (3) is then used to obtain an estimate of

z

and then equation (2) is used to get a new estimate for

R

. This process is then repeated until the relative change in

z

between consecutive iterations is

\leq \sqrt{ε}

, where

ε

is machine precision.

By construction, the cutoff for testing for

m + 1

potential outliers is less than the cutoff for testing for

m

potential outliers. Therefore Peirce's criterion is used in sequence with the existence of a single potential outlier being investigated first. If one is found, the existence of two potential outliers is investigated etc.

If one of a duplicate series of observations is flagged as an outlier, then all of them are flagged as outliers.

4 References

Gould B A (1855) On Peirce's criterion for the rejection of doubtful observations, with tables for facilitating its application The Astronomical Journal 45

Peirce B (1852) Criterion for the rejection of doubtful observations The Astronomical Journal 45

5 Arguments

1: $n$ – Integer Input: On entry: $n$ , the number of observations.

Constraint: $n \geq 3$ .
2: $p$ – Integer Input: On entry: $p$ , the number of parameters in the model used in obtaining the $y$ . If $y$ is an observed set of values, as opposed to the residuals from fitting a model with $p$ parameters, then $p$ should be set to $1$ , i.e., as if a model just containing the mean had been used.

Constraint: $1 \leq p \leq n - 2$ .
3: $y [n]$ – const double Input: On entry: $y$ , the data being tested.
4: $mean$ – double Input: On entry: if $var > 0.0$ , mean must contain $μ$ , the mean of $y$ , otherwise mean is not referenced and the mean is calculated from the data supplied in y.
5: $var$ – double Input: On entry: if $var > 0.0$ , var must contain $σ^{2}$ , the variance of $y$ , otherwise the variance is calculated from the data supplied in y.
6: $iout [n]$ – Integer Output: On exit: the indices of the values in y sorted in descending order of the absolute difference from the mean, therefore $|y [iout [i - 2] - 1] - μ| \geq |y [iout [i - 1] - 1] - μ|$ , for $i = 2, 3, \dots, n$ .
7: $niout$ – Integer * Output: On exit: the number of potential outliers. The indices for these potential outliers are held in the first niout elements of iout. By construction there can be at most $n - p - 1$ values flagged as outliers.
8: $ldiff$ – Integer Input: On entry: the maximum number of values to be returned in arrays diff and llamb.
If $ldiff \leq 0$ , arrays diff and llamb are not referenced and both diff and llamb may be NULL.
9: $diff [ldiff]$ – double Output: On exit: if diff is not NULL, $diff [i - 1]$ holds $|y - μ| - σ^{2} z$ for observation $y [iout [i - 1] - 1]$ , for $i = 1, 2, \dots, \min (ldiff, niout + 1, n - p - 1)$ .
10: $llamb [ldiff]$ – double Output: On exit: if llamb is not NULL, $llamb [i - 1]$ holds $\log (λ^{2})$ for observation $y [iout [i - 1] - 1]$ , for $i = 1, 2, \dots, \min (ldiff, niout + 1, n - p - 1)$ .
11: $fail$ – NagError * Input/Output: The NAG error argument (see Section 7 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).

6 Error Indicators and Warnings

NE_ALLOC_FAIL: Dynamic memory allocation failed.
See Section 3.1.2 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.
NE_BAD_PARAM: On entry, argument $〈value〉$ had an illegal value.
NE_INT: On entry, $n = 〈value〉$ .
Constraint: $n \geq 3$ .
NE_INT_2: On entry, $p = 〈value〉$ and $n = 〈value〉$ .
Constraint: $1 \leq p \leq n - 2$ .
NE_INTERNAL_ERROR: An internal error has occurred in this function. Check the function call and any array sizes. If the call is correct then please contact NAG for assistance.
See Section 7.5 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.
NE_NO_LICENCE: Your licence key may have expired or may not have been installed correctly.
See Section 8 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface for further information.

7 Accuracy

Not applicable.

8 Parallelism and Performance

g07gac is not threaded in any implementation.

9 Further Comments

One problem with Peirce's algorithm as implemented in g07gac is the assumed relationship between

σ^{2}

, the variance using the full dataset, and

{\tilde{σ}}^{2}

, the variance with the potential outliers removed. In some cases, for example if the data

y

were the residuals from a linear regression, this assumption may not hold as the regression line may change significantly when outlying values have been dropped resulting in a radically different set of residuals. In such cases g07gbc should be used instead.

10 Example

This example reads in a series of data and flags any potential outliers.

The dataset used is from Peirce's original paper and consists of fifteen observations on the vertical semidiameter of Venus.

Interfaces: FL CL AD

NAG CL Interface Introduction

G07 (Univar) Chapter Contents

G07 (Univar) Chapter Introduction

g07ga: FL CL AD

NAG CL Interfaceg07gac (outlier_​peirce_​1var)

▸▿ Contents

1 Purpose

2 Specification

3 Description

4 References

5 Arguments

6 Error Indicators and Warnings

7 Accuracy

8 Parallelism and Performance

9 Further Comments

10 Example

10.1 Program Text

10.2 Program Data

10.3 Program Results

NAG CL Interface
g07gac (outlier_peirce_1var)