Spider-Man, the Child and the Trickster -- Archetypal Analysis in R

Eugster, Manuel J. A. and Leisch, Friedrich (2008): Spider-Man, the Child and the Trickster -- Archetypal Analysis in R. Department of Statistics: Technical Reports, No.44

Abstract

Archetypal analysis has the aim to represent observations in a multivariate data set as convex combinations of extremal points. This approach was introduced by Cutler and Breiman (1994); they defined the concrete problem, laid out the theoretical foundations and presented an algorithm written in Fortran, which is available on request. In this paper we present the R package archetypes which is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network. The package provides an implementation of the archetypal analysis algorithm within R and different exploratory tools to analyze the algorithm during its execution and its final result. The application of the package is demonstrated on two examples.

• Item Type: Paper (Technical Report)
• Keywords: archetypal analysis, convex hull, R
• Subjects: Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics > Statistics > Technical Reports
• Dewey Classification: 600 Natural sciences and mathematics