page_title: Multivariate kernel density estimation
section_title: Motivation
hierarchical_section_title: Multivariate kernel density estimation / Motivation
caption_attribution_description: English: 2D histograms of a synthetic data set to illustrate effect of anchor point (lower left corner of histogram grid).
context_page_description: Kernel density estimation is a nonparametric technique for density estimation i.e., estimation of probability density functions, which is one of the fundamental questions in statistics. It can be viewed as a generalisation of histogram density estimation with improved statistical properties. Apart from histograms, other types of density estimators include parametric, spline, wavelet and Fourier series. Kernel density estimators were first introduced in the scientific literature for univariate data in the 1950s and 1960s and subsequently have been widely adopted. It was soon recognised that analogous estimators for multivariate data would be an important addition to multivariate statistics. Based on research carried out in the 1990s and 2000s, multivariate kernel density estimation has reached a level of maturity comparable to its univariate counterparts.
context_section_description: We take an illustrative synthetic bivariate data set of 50 points to illustrate the construction of histograms. This requires the choice of an anchor point (the lower left corner of the histogram grid). For the histogram on the left, we choose (−1.5, −1.5): for the one on the right, we shift the anchor point by 0.125 in both directions to (−1.625, −1.625). Both histograms have a binwidth of 0.5, so any differences are due to the change in the anchor point only. The colour-coding indicates the number of data points which fall into a bin: 0=white, 1=pale yellow, 2=bright yellow, 3=orange, 4=red. The left histogram appears to indicate that the upper half has a higher density than the lower half, whereas the reverse is the case for the right-hand histogram, confirming that histograms are highly sensitive to the placement of the anchor point.
  One possible solution to this anchor point placement problem is to remove the histogram binning grid completely. In the left figure below, a kernel (represented by the grey lines) is centred at each of the 50 data points above. The result of summing these kernels is given on the right figure, which is a kernel density estimate. The most striking difference between kernel density estimates and histograms is that the former are easier to interpret since they do not contain artifices induced by a binning grid.
  The coloured contours correspond to the smallest region which contains the respective probability mass: red = 25%, orange + red = 50%, yellow + orange + red = 75%, thus indicating that a single central region contains the highest density.
  The goal of density estimation is to take a finite sample of data and to make inferences about the underlying probability density function everywhere, including where no data are observed. In kernel density estimation, the contribution of each data point is smoothed out from a single point into a region of space surrounding it. Aggregating the individually smoothed contributions gives an overall picture of the structure of the data and its density function. In the details to follow, we show that this approach leads to a reasonable estimate of the underlying density function.
caption: Comparison of 2D histograms. Left. Histogram with anchor point at (−1.5, -1.5). Right. Histogram with anchor point at (−1.625, −1.625). Both histograms have a bin width of 0.5, so differences in appearances of the two histograms are due to the placement of the anchor point.
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