The emptiness inside: Finding gaps, valleys, and lacunae with geometric data analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Contardo, Gabriella, Hogg, David W., Hunt, Jason A. S., Peek, Joshua E. G., Chen, Yen-Chi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2022
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author Contardo, Gabriella
Hogg, David W.
Hunt, Jason A. S.
Peek, Joshua E. G.
Chen, Yen-Chi
author_facet Contardo, Gabriella
Hogg, David W.
Hunt, Jason A. S.
Peek, Joshua E. G.
Chen, Yen-Chi
contents Discoveries of gaps in data have been important in astrophysics. For example, there are kinematic gaps opened by resonances in dynamical systems, or exoplanets of a certain radius that are empirically rare. A gap in a data set is a kind of anomaly, but in an unusual sense: Instead of being a single outlier data point, situated far from other data points, it is a region of the space, or a set of points, that is anomalous compared to its surroundings. Gaps are both interesting and hard to find and characterize, especially when they have non-trivial shapes. We present in this paper a statistic that can be used to estimate the (local) "gappiness" of a point in the data space. It uses the gradient and Hessian of the density estimate (and thus requires a twice-differentiable density estimator). This statistic can be computed at (almost) any point in the space and does not rely on optimization; it allows to highlight under-dense regions of any dimensionality and shape in a general and efficient way. We illustrate our method on the velocity distribution of nearby stars in the Milky Way disk plane, which exhibits gaps that could originate from different processes. Identifying and characterizing those gaps could help determine their origins. We provide in an Appendix implementation notes and additional considerations for finding under-densities in data, using critical points and the properties of the Hessian of the density.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2201_10674
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The emptiness inside: Finding gaps, valleys, and lacunae with geometric data analysis
Contardo, Gabriella
Hogg, David W.
Hunt, Jason A. S.
Peek, Joshua E. G.
Chen, Yen-Chi
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Discoveries of gaps in data have been important in astrophysics. For example, there are kinematic gaps opened by resonances in dynamical systems, or exoplanets of a certain radius that are empirically rare. A gap in a data set is a kind of anomaly, but in an unusual sense: Instead of being a single outlier data point, situated far from other data points, it is a region of the space, or a set of points, that is anomalous compared to its surroundings. Gaps are both interesting and hard to find and characterize, especially when they have non-trivial shapes. We present in this paper a statistic that can be used to estimate the (local) "gappiness" of a point in the data space. It uses the gradient and Hessian of the density estimate (and thus requires a twice-differentiable density estimator). This statistic can be computed at (almost) any point in the space and does not rely on optimization; it allows to highlight under-dense regions of any dimensionality and shape in a general and efficient way. We illustrate our method on the velocity distribution of nearby stars in the Milky Way disk plane, which exhibits gaps that could originate from different processes. Identifying and characterizing those gaps could help determine their origins. We provide in an Appendix implementation notes and additional considerations for finding under-densities in data, using critical points and the properties of the Hessian of the density.
title The emptiness inside: Finding gaps, valleys, and lacunae with geometric data analysis
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10674