Auditor Malpractice: Identifying High-Risk Engagements by the Use of Multivariate Analysis

Auditor Malpractice: Identifying high-risk engagements by the use of multivariate analysi

The forensic analysis of soil by FTIR with multivariate analysis

Over the past few years more and more studies have been carried out in an attempt to utilize chemical profiles of soil using a wide variety of analytical methods. The value of soil as evidence rests with its prevalence at crime scenes and its transferability between the scene and the criminal. This can be of value for comparison if the scene of crime is known, but could also be so in the identification of a scene. The main basis for the comparison of sites to determine provenance is that soils vary from one place to another. The aim of this work is to find simple methods to identify soil provenance based on FTIR and multivariate analysi

On Identity Tests for High Dimensional Data Using RMT

In this work, we redefined two important statistics, the CLRT test (Bai et.al., Ann. Stat. 37 (2009) 3822-3840) and the LW test (Ledoit and Wolf, Ann. Stat. 30 (2002) 1081-1102) on identity tests for high dimensional data using random matrix theories. Compared with existing CLRT and LW tests, the new tests can accommodate data which has unknown means and non-Gaussian distributions. Simulations demonstrate that the new tests have good properties in terms of size and power. What is more, even for Gaussian data, our new tests perform favorably in comparison to existing tests. Finally, we find the CLRT is more sensitive to eigenvalues less than 1 while the LW test has more advantages in relation to detecting eigenvalues larger than 1.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, To be published in the Journal of Multivariate Analysi

Large Dimensional Analysis and Optimization of Robust Shrinkage Covariance Matrix Estimators

This article studies two regularized robust estimators of scatter matrices proposed (and proved to be well defined) in parallel in (Chen et al., 2011) and (Pascal et al., 2013), based on Tyler's robust M-estimator (Tyler, 1987) and on Ledoit and Wolf's shrinkage covariance matrix estimator (Ledoit and Wolf, 2004). These hybrid estimators have the advantage of conveying (i) robustness to outliers or impulsive samples and (ii) small sample size adequacy to the classical sample covariance matrix estimator. We consider here the case of i.i.d. elliptical zero mean samples in the regime where both sample and population sizes are large. We demonstrate that, under this setting, the estimators under study asymptotically behave similar to well-understood random matrix models. This characterization allows us to derive optimal shrinkage strategies to estimate the population scatter matrix, improving significantly upon the empirical shrinkage method proposed in (Chen et al., 2011).Comment: Journal of Multivariate Analysi

Extreme Eigenvalue Distributions of Some Complex Correlated Non-Central Wishart and Gamma-Wishart Random Matrices

Let $\mathbf{W}$ be a correlated complex non-central Wishart matrix defined through $\mathbf{W}=\mathbf{X}^H\mathbf{X}$, where $\mathbf{X}$ is $n\times m \, (n\geq m)$ complex Gaussian with non-zero mean $\boldsymbol{\Upsilon}$ and non-trivial covariance $\boldsymbol{\Sigma}$. We derive exact expressions for the cumulative distribution functions (c.d.f.s) of the extreme eigenvalues (i.e., maximum and minimum) of $\mathbf{W}$ for some particular cases. These results are quite simple, involving rapidly converging infinite series, and apply for the practically important case where $\boldsymbol{\Upsilon}$ has rank one. We also derive analogous results for a certain class of gamma-Wishart random matrices, for which $\boldsymbol{\Upsilon}^H\boldsymbol{\Upsilon}$ follows a matrix-variate gamma distribution. The eigenvalue distributions in this paper have various applications to wireless communication systems, and arise in other fields such as econometrics, statistical physics, and multivariate statistics.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Multivariate Analysi

The multivariate Piecing-Together approach revisited

The univariate Piecing-Together approach (PT) fits a univariate generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) to the upper tail of a given distribution function in a continuous manner. A multivariate extension was established by Aulbach et al. (2012a): The upper tail of a given copula C is cut off and replaced by a multivariate GPD-copula in a continuous manner, yielding a new copula called a PT-copula. Then each margin of this PT-copula is transformed by a given univariate distribution function. This provides a multivariate distribution function with prescribed margins, whose copula is a GPD-copula that coincides in its central part with C. In addition to Aulbach et al. (2012a), we achieve in the present paper an exact representation of the PT-copula's upper tail, giving further insight into the multivariate PT approach. A variant based on the empirical copula is also added. Furthermore our findings enable us to establish a functional PT version as well.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the Journal of Multivariate Analysi

Densities for random balanced sampling

A random balanced sample (RBS) is a multivariate distribution with n components X_1,...,X_n, each uniformly distributed on [-1, 1], such that the sum of these components is precisely 0. The corresponding vectors X lie in an (n-1)-dimensional polytope M(n). We present new methods for the construction of such RBS via densities over M(n) and these apply for arbitrary n. While simple densities had been known previously for small values of n (namely 2,3 and 4), for larger n the known distributions with large support were fractal distributions (with fractal dimension asymptotic to n as n approaches infinity). Applications of RBS distributions include sampling with antithetic coupling to reduce variance, and the isolation of nonlinearities. We also show that the previously known densities (for n<5) are in fact the only solutions in a natural and very large class of potential RBS densities. This finding clarifies the need for new methods, such as those presented here.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Journal of Multivariate Analysi

Parametric estimation of the driving L\'evy process of multivariate CARMA processes from discrete observations

We consider the parametric estimation of the driving L\'evy process of a multivariate continuous-time autoregressive moving average (MCARMA) process, which is observed on the discrete time grid $(0,h,2h,...)$. Beginning with a new state space representation, we develop a method to recover the driving L\'evy process exactly from a continuous record of the observed MCARMA process. We use tools from numerical analysis and the theory of infinitely divisible distributions to extend this result to allow for the approximate recovery of unit increments of the driving L\'evy process from discrete-time observations of the MCARMA process. We show that, if the sampling interval $h=h_N$ is chosen dependent on $N$, the length of the observation horizon, such that $N h_N$ converges to zero as $N$ tends to infinity, then any suitable generalized method of moments estimator based on this reconstructed sample of unit increments has the same asymptotic distribution as the one based on the true increments, and is, in particular, asymptotically normally distributed.Comment: 38 pages, four figures; to appear in Journal of Multivariate Analysi