An estimator for the number of clusters in a population

  1. Prieto Martínez, Juan José
Revista:
Revista de la Academia Canaria de Ciencias: = Folia Canariensis Academiae Scientiarum

ISSN: 1130-4723

Año de publicación: 1997

Volumen: 9

Número: 1

Páginas: 97-124

Tipo: Artículo

Otras publicaciones en: Revista de la Academia Canaria de Ciencias: = Folia Canariensis Academiae Scientiarum

Resumen

Assume that a random sample is drawn from a population with an unknown number K of clusters. This work propases a nonparametric method to estimate the number of clusters when most of the information is concentrated on the low arder occupancy numbers. This paper derives an estimator to K and proves the asymptotic distribution using a method of Holst (1979). The performance of the estimator is investigated by means of Monte Carla experiments and it is applied to one real data example.