Methods for tracking support boundaries with corners

Ming Yen Cheng*, Peter Hall

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

In a range of practical problems the boundary of the support of a bivariate distribution is of interest, for example where it describes a limit to efficiency or performance, or where it determines the physical extremities of a spatially distributed population in forestry, marine science, medicine, meteorology or geology. We suggest a tracking-based method for estimating a support boundary when it is composed of a finite number of smooth curves, meeting together at corners. The smooth parts of the boundary are assumed to have continuously turning tangents and bounded curvature, and the corners are not allowed to be infinitely sharp; that is, the angle between the two tangents should not equal π. In other respects, however, the boundary may be quite general. In particular it need not be uniquely defined in Cartesian coordinates, its corners my be either concave or convex, and its smooth parts may be neither concave nor convex. Tracking methods are well suited to such generalities, and they also have the advantage of requiring relatively small amounts of computation. It is shown that they achieve optimal convergence rates, in the sense of uniform approximation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1870-1893
Number of pages24
JournalJournal of Multivariate Analysis
Volume97
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2006

User-Defined Keywords

  • bandwidth
  • boundary
  • corner
  • curvature
  • frontier
  • kernel method
  • local linear
  • nonparametric curve estimation
  • support

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Methods for tracking support boundaries with corners'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this