Courses

presented by Jim Ramsay, McGill University, and Insightful
Tuesday, August 16, 2005, 8:00am PT

URL: http://www.insightful.com/news_events/webcasts/2005/08ramsay/default.asp

Free

Functional data analysis involves analysis of data/measurements as functions or curves, rather than analysis of individual data points. In many applications, data measurements are best considered as functions, even when data are gathered at a relatively few number of points. Functional data arise in many fields of research including growth rates, health status indicators, tumor sizes, weather changes, and stock prices.

In this Web cast, we will review two examples of functional data: Height measurements for samples of girls and boys, and a single long series of values of an economic indicator. Our first task will be smoothing, which is the estimation of a smooth function for each set of discrete data values. Once the data are smoothed, we move to some typical functional data analyses, such as the display of descriptive functional statistics, principal components analysis, and functional linear regression.

The goal is to provide a first glimpse of functional data analyses by using the latest version of S-PLUS. In addition, we will explain concepts such as basis functions, smoothing, and object oriented programming techniques. A reference for this Web cast is D. B. Clarkson, C. Fraley, C. C. Guy and J. O. Ramsay (2005) S+Functional Data Analysis User's Guide. New York: Springer.