Flexible Clustering with a Sparse Mixture of Generalized Hyperbolic Distributions

Abstract: Robust clustering of high-dimensional data is an important topic because clusters in real datasets are often heavy-tailed and/or asymmetric. Traditional approaches to model-based clustering often fail for high dimensional data, e.g., due to the number of free covariance parameters. A parametrization of the component scale matrices for the mixture of generalized hyperbolic distributions is proposed. This parameterization includes a penalty term in the likelihood. An analytically feasible expectation-maximization algorithm is developed by placing a gamma-lasso penalty constraining the concentration matrix. The proposed methodology is investigated through simulation studies and illustrated using two real datasets.