AbstractOutliers are encountered in all practical situations of data analysis, regardless of the discipline of application. However, the term outlier is not uniformly defined across all these fields since the differentiation between regular and irregular behaviour is naturally embedded in the subject area under consideration. Generalized approaches for outlier identification have to be modified to allow the diligent search for potential outliers. Therefore, an overview of different techniques for multivariate outlier detection is presented within the scope of selected kinds of data frequently found in the field of geosciences. In particular, three common types of data in geological studies are explored: spatial, compositional and flat data. All of these formats motivate new outlier concepts, such as local outlyingness, where the spatial information of the data is used to define a neighbourhood structure. Another type are compositional data, which nicely illustrate the fact that some kinds of data require not only adaptations to standard outlier approaches, but also transformations of the data itself before conducting the outlier search. Finally, the very recently developed concept of cellwise outlyingness, typically used for high-dimensional data, allows one to identify atypical cells in a data matrix. In practice, the different data formats can be mixed, and it is demonstrated in various examples how to proceed in such situations.
Multivariate Outlier Detection Based on Depth-Based Outlyingness Function
