The routine may be called by the names g03dcf or nagf_mv_discrim_group.
3Description
Discriminant analysis is concerned with the allocation of observations to groups using information from other observations whose group membership is known, ; these are called the training set. Consider variables observed on populations or groups. Let be the sample mean and the within-group variance-covariance matrix for the th group; these are calculated from a training set of observations with observations in the th group, and let be the th observation from the set of observations to be allocated to the groups. The observation can be allocated to a group according to a selected rule. The allocation rule or discriminant function will be based on the distance of the observation from an estimate of the location of the groups, usually the group means. A measure of the distance of the observation from the th group mean is given by the Mahalanobis distance, :
(1)
If the pooled estimate of the variance-covariance matrix is used rather than the within-group variance-covariance matrices, then the distance is:
(2)
Instead of using the variance-covariance matrices and , g03dcf uses the upper triangular matrices and supplied by g03daf such that and . can then be calculated as where or as appropriate.
In addition to the distances, a set of prior probabilities of group membership, , for , may be used, with . The prior probabilities reflect your view as to the likelihood of the observations coming from the different groups. Two common cases for prior probabilities are , that is, equal prior probabilities, and , for , that is, prior probabilities proportional to the number of observations in the groups in the training set.
g03dcf uses one of four allocation rules. In all four rules the variables are assumed to follow a multivariate Normal distribution with mean and variance-covariance matrix if the observation comes from the th group. The different rules depend on whether or not the within-group variance-covariance matrices are assumed equal, i.e., , and whether a predictive or estimative approach is used. If
is the probability of observing the observation from group , then the posterior probability of belonging to group is:
(3)
In the estimative approach, the parameters and in (3) are replaced by their estimates calculated from . In the predictive approach, a non-informative prior distribution is used for the parameters and a posterior distribution for the parameters,
, is found. A predictive distribution is then obtained by integrating
over the parameter space. This predictive distribution then replaces
in (3). See Aitchison and Dunsmore (1975), Aitchison et al. (1977) and Moran and Murphy (1979) for further details.
The observation is allocated to the group with the highest posterior probability. Denoting the posterior probabilities,
, by , the four allocation rules are:
(i)Estimative with equal variance-covariance matrices – Linear Discrimination
(ii)Estimative with unequal variance-covariance matrices – Quadratic Discrimination
(iii)Predictive with equal variance-covariance matrices
(iv)Predictive with unequal variance-covariance matrices
where
In the above the appropriate value of from (1) or (2) is used. The values of the are standardized so that,
Moran and Murphy (1979) show the similarity between the predictive methods and methods based upon likelihood ratio tests.
In addition to allocating the observation to a group, g03dcf computes an atypicality index, . The predictive atypicality index is returned, irrespective of the value of the parameter typ. This represents the probability of obtaining an observation more typical of group than the observed (see Aitchison and Dunsmore (1975) and Aitchison et al. (1977)). The atypicality index is computed for unequal within-group variance-covariance matrices as:
where is the lower tail probability from a beta distribution and
and for equal within-group variance-covariance matrices as:
with
If is close to for all groups it indicates that the observation may come from a grouping not represented in the training set. Moran and Murphy (1979) provide a frequentist interpretation of .
4References
Aitchison J and Dunsmore I R (1975) Statistical Prediction Analysis Cambridge
Aitchison J, Habbema J D F and Kay J W (1977) A critical comparison of two methods of statistical discrimination Appl. Statist.26 15–25
Kendall M G and Stuart A (1976) The Advanced Theory of Statistics (Volume 3) (3rd Edition) Griffin
Krzanowski W J (1990) Principles of Multivariate Analysis Oxford University Press
Moran M A and Murphy B J (1979) A closer look at two alternative methods of statistical discrimination Appl. Statist.28 223–232
Morrison D F (1967) Multivariate Statistical Methods McGraw–Hill
5Arguments
1: – Character(1)Input
On entry: whether the estimative or predictive approach is used.
The estimative approach is used.
The predictive approach is used.
Constraint:
or .
2: – Character(1)Input
On entry: indicates whether or not the within-group variance-covariance matrices are assumed to be equal and the pooled variance-covariance matrix used.
The within-group variance-covariance matrices are assumed equal and the matrix stored in the first elements of gc is used.
The within-group variance-covariance matrices are assumed to be unequal and the matrices
, for , stored in the remainder of gc are used.
Constraint:
or .
3: – Character(1)Input
On entry: indicates the form of the prior probabilities to be used.
Equal prior probabilities are used.
Prior probabilities proportional to the group sizes in the training set, , are used.
On entry: , the number of variables in the variance-covariance matrices.
Constraint:
.
5: – IntegerInput
On entry: the number of groups, .
Constraint:
.
6: – Integer arrayInput
On entry: the number of observations in each group in the training set, .
Constraints:
if ,
and , for ;
if ,
, for .
7: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayInput
On entry: the
th row of gmn contains the means of the variables for the th group, for . These are returned by g03daf.
8: – IntegerInput
On entry: the first dimension of the array gmn as declared in the (sub)program from which g03dcf is called.
Constraint:
.
9: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayInput
On entry: the first elements of gc should contain the upper triangular matrix and the next blocks of elements should contain the upper triangular matrices .
All matrices must be stored packed by column. These matrices are returned by g03daf. If only the first elements are referenced, if only the elements to are referenced.
Constraints:
if , the diagonal elements of must be ;
if ,
the diagonal elements of the must be , for .
10: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayInput
On entry: if . the logarithms of the determinants of the within-group variance-covariance matrices as returned by g03daf. Otherwise det is not referenced.
11: – IntegerInput
On entry: the number of observations in x which are to be allocated.
Constraint:
.
12: – IntegerInput
On entry: the number of variables in the data array x.
Constraint:
.
13: – Integer arrayInput
On entry: indicates if the th variable in x is to be included in the distance calculations.
If
, the th variable is included, for ; otherwise the th variable is not referenced.
On entry: ifail must be set to , or to set behaviour on detection of an error; these values have no effect when no error is detected.
A value of causes the printing of an error message and program execution will be halted; otherwise program execution continues. A value of means that an error message is printed while a value of means that it is not.
If halting is not appropriate, the value or is recommended. If message printing is undesirable, then the value is recommended. Otherwise, the value is recommended. When the value or is used it is essential to test the value of ifail on exit.
On exit: unless the routine detects an error or a warning has been flagged (see Section 6).
6Error Indicators and Warnings
If on entry or , explanatory error messages are output on the current error message unit (as defined by x04aaf).
Errors or warnings detected by the routine:
On entry, .
Constraint: or .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, .
Constraint: .
On entry, .
Constraint: .
On entry, .
Constraint: .
On entry, .
Constraint: , or .
On entry, .
Constraint: or .
On entry, , and .
Constraint: .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, and values of .
Constraint: exactly nvar elements of .
On entry, .
On entry, and .
Constraint: .
On entry, .
On entry, a diagonal element of or is zero.
An unexpected error has been triggered by this routine. Please
contact NAG.
See Section 7 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
Your licence key may have expired or may not have been installed correctly.
See Section 8 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
Dynamic memory allocation failed.
See Section 9 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
7Accuracy
The accuracy of the returned posterior probabilities will depend on the accuracy of the input or matrices. The atypicality index should be accurate to four significant places.
8Parallelism and Performance
Background information to multithreading can be found in the Multithreading documentation.
g03dcf makes calls to BLAS and/or LAPACK routines, which may be threaded within the vendor library used by this implementation. Consult the documentation for the vendor library for further information.
Please consult the X06 Chapter Introduction for information on how to control and interrogate the OpenMP environment used within this routine. Please also consult the Users' Note for your implementation for any additional implementation-specific information.
9Further Comments
The distances can be computed using g03dbf if other forms of discrimination are required.
10Example
The data, taken from Aitchison and Dunsmore (1975), is concerned with the diagnosis of three ‘types’ of Cushing's syndrome. The variables are the logarithms of the urinary excretion rates (mg/24hr) of two steroid metabolites. Observations for a total of patients are input and the group means and matrices are computed by g03daf. A further six observations of unknown type are input and allocations made using the predictive approach and under the assumption that the within-group covariance matrices are not equal. The posterior probabilities of group membership, , and the atypicality index are printed along with the allocated group. The atypicality index shows that observations and do not seem to be typical of the three types present in the initial observations.