Even for a well-trained statistician the construction of a histogram for a given real-valued data set is a difficult problem. It is even more difficult to construct a fully automatic procedure which specifies the number and widths of the bins in a satisfactory manner for a wide range of data sets. In this paper we compare several histogram construction procedures by means of a simulation study. The study includes plug-in methods, cross-validation, penalized maximum likelihood and the taut string procedure. Their performance on different test beds is measured by their ability to identify the peaks of an underlying density as well as by Hellinger distance.
Keywords: regular histogram, model selection, penalized likelihood, taut string
@article{PS_2009__13__181_0, author = {Davies, Laurie and Gather, Ursula and Nordman, Dan and Weinert, Henrike}, title = {A comparison of automatic histogram constructions}, journal = {ESAIM: Probability and Statistics}, pages = {181--196}, publisher = {EDP-Sciences}, volume = {13}, year = {2009}, doi = {10.1051/ps:2008005}, mrnumber = {2518545}, language = {en}, url = {http://www.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ps:2008005/} }
TY - JOUR AU - Davies, Laurie AU - Gather, Ursula AU - Nordman, Dan AU - Weinert, Henrike TI - A comparison of automatic histogram constructions JO - ESAIM: Probability and Statistics PY - 2009 SP - 181 EP - 196 VL - 13 PB - EDP-Sciences UR - http://www.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ps:2008005/ DO - 10.1051/ps:2008005 LA - en ID - PS_2009__13__181_0 ER -
%0 Journal Article %A Davies, Laurie %A Gather, Ursula %A Nordman, Dan %A Weinert, Henrike %T A comparison of automatic histogram constructions %J ESAIM: Probability and Statistics %D 2009 %P 181-196 %V 13 %I EDP-Sciences %U http://www.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ps:2008005/ %R 10.1051/ps:2008005 %G en %F PS_2009__13__181_0
Davies, Laurie; Gather, Ursula; Nordman, Dan; Weinert, Henrike. A comparison of automatic histogram constructions. ESAIM: Probability and Statistics, Volume 13 (2009), pp. 181-196. doi : 10.1051/ps:2008005. http://www.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ps:2008005/
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