Campus Units

Statistics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2012

Journal or Book Title

Journal of Statistical Software

Volume

51

Issue

12

First Page

1

Last Page

25

DOI

10.18637/jss.v051.i12

Abstract

The R package MixSim is a new tool that allows simulating mixtures of Gaussian distributions with different levels of overlap between mixture components. Pairwise overlap, defined as a sum of two misclassification probabilities, measures the degree of interaction between components and can be readily employed to control the clustering complexity of datasets simulated from mixtures. These datasets can then be used for systematic performance investigation of clustering and finite mixture modeling algorithms. Among other capabilities of MixSim, there are computing the exact overlap for Gaussian mixtures, simulating Gaussian and non-Gaussian data, simulating outliers and noise variables, calculating various measures of agreement between two partitionings, and constructing parallel distribution plots for the graphical display of finite mixture models. All features of the package are illustrated in great detail. The utility of the package is highlighted through a small comparison study of several popular clustering algorithms.

Comments

This is an article from Journal of Statistical Software 51 (2012): doi: 10.18637/jss.v051.i12. Posted with permission.

Rights

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright Owner

The Authors

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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