English

On the trace ratio method and Fisher's discriminant analysis for robust multigroup classification

Statistics Theory 2023-07-13 v2 Numerical Analysis Numerical Analysis Statistics Theory

Abstract

We compare two different linear dimensionality reduction strategies for the multigroup classification problem: the trace ratio method and Fisher's discriminant analysis. Recently, trace ratio optimization has gained in popularity due to its computational efficiency, as well as the occasionally better classification results. However, a statistical understanding is still incomplete. We study and compare the properties of the two methods. Then, we propose a robust version of the trace ratio method, to handle the presence of outliers in the data. We reinterpret an asymptotic perturbation bound for the solution to the trace ratio, in a contamination setting. Finally, we compare the performance of the trace ratio method and Fisher's discriminant analysis on both synthetic and real datasets, using classical and robust estimators.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.08120,
  title  = {On the trace ratio method and Fisher's discriminant analysis for robust multigroup classification},
  author = {Giulia Ferrandi and Igor V. Kravchenko and Michiel E. Hochstenbach and M. Rosário Oliveira},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.08120},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:56:48.839Z