arXiv subjects

Sven Serneels

Publications and source records attributed to Sven Serneels.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Twoblock clustering trees with coskewness-based dimension reduction: recovering piecewise multivariate linear regimes

The twoblock clustering tree (\tbtree) is introduced as a highly interpretable regression tree for multivariate responses. Twoblock trees are deterministic decision trees that have local multivariate linear models as their leaves and use dense or sparse twoblock dimension reduction as local leaf models and in the impurity. The resulting models are both computationally efficient and can be highly interpretable. Beyond proposing the decision tree estimator itself, this paper also introduces an estimator for the twoblock dimension reduced space based on maximizing coskewness, which facilitates identification of non-normal clusters in the data. The tree inherently produces a set of local linear models and is therefore apt to recover peicewise linear regimes, which is illustrated in a simulation. However, two real world data examples illustrate that twoblock trees are also capable of modeling more complexly nonlinear dependencies and can perform on par with black box modeling techniques, such as random forests. At each point, both the twoblock models that generate the splits, as well as the ones in the leaves, can be inspected and interpreted.

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arXiv2026

Robust Twoblock Simultaneous Dimension Reduction

This paper introduces robust twoblock (RTB) simultaneous dimension reduction, which is the first statistically robust method to perform simultaneous dimension reduction in two blocks of variables and allows to fine-tune the model complexity in each block individually. The paper proposes both a dense and a sparse version of the new method. Sparse RTB is the first robust estimator that allows to select both model complexity and the degree of sparsity for each block individually. RTB thereby allows to optimally extract and summarize the relevant portion of information in each block of data, also in the presence of outliers. As a corollary, the estimators can be recombined into a single estimate of regression coefficients for multivariate regression that is operable when the number of variables exceeds the number of cases in each block. An extensive simulation study illustrates that the new methods are resistant to different types of outliers, while maintaining estimation efficiency. across a range of dimensionality settings. These findings both hold true for the dense and the sparse method. The methods' performance is further illustrated on two example data sets and a straightforward algorithm is presented and made accessible in an open source repository.

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arXiv2026

Cellwise Robust Twoblock Dimension Reduction

Cellwise Robust Twoblock (CRTB) is introduced, the first cellwise robust method for simultaneous dimension reduction of multivariate predictor and response blocks, in both a dense and a sparse variable-selecting variant. Classical robust methods protect against casewise outliers by downweighting or removing entire observations, a strategy that becomes inefficient -- and eventually breaks down -- when contamination is scattered across individual cells rather than concentrated in whole rows. CRTB combines a column-wise pre-filter for cellwise outlier detection with model-based imputation of flagged cells inside an iteratively reweighted M-estimation loop, retaining the clean cells of partially contaminated rows instead of discarding the observation. An efficient algorithm is provided that uses the classical twoblock SVD as a warm start and converges in a handful of IRLS iterations at a moderate computational cost. The method resists settings where more than $50\%$ of rows contain contaminated cells while retaining comparable efficiency on clean data. A simulation study confirms these properties and shows that CRTB additionally recovers the underlying cellwise outlier pattern with high fidelity and, in the sparse setting, the correct set of informative variables. Two compelling examples illustrate CRTB's practical utility. In each of these, CRTB is shown to be conducive to results that are highly interpretable in the respective domains in the presence of cellwise outliers. As a by-product, the corresponding cells are identified with high fidelity.

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arXiv2024

Sparse twoblock dimension reduction for simultaneous compression and variable selection in two blocks of variables

A method is introduced to perform simultaneous sparse dimension reduction on two blocks of variables. Beyond dimension reduction, it also yields an estimator for multivariate regression with the capability to intrinsically deselect uninformative variables in both independent and dependent blocks. An algorithm is provided that leads to a straightforward implementation of the method. The benefits of simultaneous sparse dimension reduction are shown to carry through to enhanced capability to predict a set of multivariate dependent variables jointly. Both in a simulation study and in two chemometric applications, the new method outperforms its dense counterpart, as well as multivariate partial least squares.

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arXiv2022

Non-fungible token transactions: data and challenges

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) have recently emerged as a novel blockchain hosted financial asset class that has attracted major transaction volumes. Investment decisions rely on data and adequate preprocessing and application of analytics to them. Both owing to the non-fungible nature of the tokens and to a blockchain being the primary data source, NFT transaction data pose several challenges not commonly encountered in traditional financial data. Using data that consist of the transaction history of eight highly valued NFT collections, a selection of such challenges is illustrated. These are: price differentiation by token traits, the possible existence of lateral swaps and wash trades in the transaction history and finally, severe volatility. While this paper merely scratches the surface of how data analytics can be applied in this context, the data and challenges laid out here may present opportunities for future research on the topic.

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arXiv2020

Sparse dimension reduction based on energy and ball statistics

As its name suggests, sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) targets to estimate a subspace from data that contains all information sufficient to explain a dependent variable. Ample approaches exist to SDR, some of the most recent of which rely on minimal to no model assumptions. These are defined according to an optimization criterion that maximizes a nonparametric measure of association. The original estimators are nonsparse, which means that all variables contribute to the model. However, in many practical applications, an SDR technique may be called for that is sparse and as such, intrinsically performs sufficient variable selection (SVS). This paper examines how such a sparse SDR estimator can be constructed. Three variants are investigated, depending on different measures of association: distance covariance, martingale difference divergence and ball covariance. A simulation study shows that each of these estimators can achieve correct variable selection in highly nonlinear contexts, yet are sensitive to outliers and computationally intensive. The study sheds light on the subtle differences between the methods. Two examples illustrate how these new estimators can be applied in practice, with a slight preference for the option based on martingale difference divergence in the bioinformatics example.

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arXiv2020

Robust multivariate methods in Chemometrics

This chapter presents an introduction to robust statistics with applications of a chemometric nature. Following a description of the basic ideas and concepts behind robust statistics, including how robust estimators can be conceived, the chapter builds up to the construction (and use) of robust alternatives for some methods for multivariate analysis frequently used in chemometrics, such as principal component analysis and partial least squares. The chapter then provides an insight into how these robust methods can be used or extended to classification. To conclude, the issue of validation of the results is being addressed: it is shown how uncertainty statements associated with robust estimates, can be obtained.

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arXiv2020

direpack: A Python 3 package for state-of-the-art statistical dimension reduction methods

The direpack package aims to establish a set of modern statistical dimension reduction techniques into the Python universe as a single, consistent package. The dimension reduction methods included resort into three categories: projection pursuit based dimension reduction, sufficient dimension reduction, and robust M estimators for dimension reduction. As a corollary, regularized regression estimators based on these reduced dimension spaces are provided as well, ranging from classical principal component regression up to sparse partial robust M regression. The package also contains a set of classical and robust pre-processing utilities, including generalized spatial signs, as well as dedicated plotting functionality and cross-validation utilities. Finally, direpack has been written consistent with the scikit-learn API, such that the estimators can flawlessly be included into (statistical and/or machine) learning pipelines in that framework.

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arXiv2020

Cellwise Robust M Regression

The cellwise robust M regression estimator is introduced as the first estimator of its kind that intrinsically yields both a map of cellwise outliers consistent with the linear model, and a vector of regression coefficients that is robust against vertical outliers and leverage points. As a by-product, the method yields a weighted and imputed data set that contains estimates of what the values in cellwise outliers would need to amount to if they had fit the model. The method is illustrated to be equally robust as its casewise counterpart, MM regression. The cellwise regression method discards less information than any casewise robust estimator. Therefore, predictive power can be expected to be at least as good as casewise alternatives. These results are corroborated in a simulation study. Moreover, while the simulations show that predictive performance is at least on par with casewise methods if not better, an application to a data set consisting of compositions of Swiss nutrients, shows that in individual cases, CRM can achieve a significantly higher predictive accuracy compared to MM regression.

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arXiv2019

Projection pursuit based generalized betas accounting for higher order co-moment effects in financial market analysis

Betas are possibly the most frequently applied tool to analyze how securities relate to the market. While in very widespread use, betas only express dynamics derived from second moment statistics. Financial returns data often deviate from normal assumptions in the sense that they have significant third and fourth order moments and contain outliers. This paper targets to introduce a way to calculate generalized betas that also account for higher order moment effects, while maintaining the conceptual simplicity and interpretability of betas. Thereunto, the co-moment analysis projection index (CAPI) is introduced. When applied as a projection index in the projection pursuit (PP) framework, generalized betas are obtained as the directions optimizing the CAPI objective. A version of CAPI based on trimmed means is introduced as well, which is more stable in the presence of outliers. Simulation results underpin the statistical properties of all projections and a small, yet highly illustrative example is presented.

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arXiv2018

Multivariate Constrained Robust M-Regression for Shaping Forward Curves in Electricity Markets

In this paper, a multivariate constrained robust M-regression (MCRM) method is developed to estimate shaping coefficients for electricity forward prices. An important benefit of the new method is that model arbitrage can be ruled out at an elementary level, as all shaping coefficients are treated simultaneously. Moreover, the new method is robust to outliers, such that the provided results are stable and not sensitive to isolated sparks or dips in the market. An efficient algorithm is presented to estimate all shaping coefficients at a low computational cost. To illustrate its good performance, the method is applied to German electricity prices.

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arXiv2017

Outlyingness: why do outliers lie out?

Outlier detection is an inevitable step to most statistical data analyses. However, the mere detection of an outlying case does not always answer all scientific questions associated with that data point. Outlier detection techniques, classical and robust alike, will typically flag the entire case as outlying, or attribute a specific case weight to the entire case. In practice, particularly in high dimensional data, the outlier will most likely not be outlying along all of its variables, but just along a subset of them. If so, the scientific question why the case has been flagged as an outlier becomes of interest. In this article, a fast and efficient method is proposed to detect variables that contribute most to an outlier's outlyingness. Thereby, it helps the analyst understand why an outlier lies out. The approach pursued in this work is to estimate the univariate direction of maximal outlyingness. It is shown that the problem of estimating that direction can be rewritten as the normed solution of a classical least squares regression problem. Identifying the subset of variables contributing most to outlyingness, can thus be achieved by estimating the associated least squares problem in a sparse manner. From a practical perspective, sparse partial least squares (SPLS) regression, preferably by the fast sparse NIPALS (SNIPLS) algorithm, is suggested to tackle that problem. The proposed methodology is illustrated to perform well both on simulated data and real life examples.

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