Robust principal components: A generalized variance perspective

This article compares several methods for performing robust principal component analysis, two of which have not been considered in previous articles. The criterion here, unlike that of extant articles aimed at comparing methods, is how well a method maximizes a robust version of the generalized variance of the projected data. This is in contrast to maximizing some measure of scatter associated with the marginal distributions of the projected scores, which does not take into account the overall structure of the projected data. Included are comparisons in which distributions are not elliptically symmetric. One of the new methods simply removes outliers using a projection-type multivariate outlier detection method that has been found to perform well relative to other outlier detection methods that have been proposed. The other new method belongs to the class of projection pursuit techniques and differs from other projection pursuit methods in terms of the function it tries to maximize. The comparisons include the method derived by Maronna (2005), the spherical method derived by Locantore et al. (1999), as well as a method proposed by Hubert, Rousseeuw, and Vanden Branden (2005). From the perspective used, the method by Hubert et al. (2005), the spherical method, and one of the new methods dominate the method derived by Maronna.