Joint Use of Third and Fourth Cumulants in Independent Component Analysis

The independent component model is a latent variable model where the components of the observed random vector are linear combinations of latent independent variables. The aim is to find an estimate for a transformation matrix back to independent components. In moment-based approaches third cumulants are often neglected in favor of fourth cumulants, even though both approaches have similar appealing properties. This paper considers the joint use of third and fourth cumulants in finding independent components. First, univariate cumulants are used as projection indices in search for independent components (projection pursuit). Second, multivariate cumulant matrices are jointly used to solve the problem. The properties of the estimates are considered in detail through corresponding optimization problems, estimating equations, algorithms and asymptotic statistical properties. Comparisons of the asymptotic variances of different estimates in wide independent component models show that in most cases symmetric projection pursuit approach using both third and fourth squared cumulants is a safe choice.