% File src/library/stats/man/density.Rd % Part of the R package, https://www.R-project.org % Copyright 1995-2024 R Core Team % Distributed under GPL 2 or later \name{density} \alias{density} \alias{density.default} % \alias{print.density} \title{Kernel Density Estimation} \usage{ density(x, \dots) \method{density}{default}(x, bw = "nrd0", adjust = 1, kernel = c("gaussian", "epanechnikov", "rectangular", "triangular", "biweight", "cosine", "optcosine"), weights = NULL, window = kernel, width, give.Rkern = FALSE, subdensity = FALSE, warnWbw = var(weights) > 0, n = 512, from, to, cut = 3, ext = 4, old.coords = FALSE, na.rm = FALSE, \dots) } \arguments{ \item{x}{the data from which the estimate is to be computed. For the default method a numeric vector: long vectors are not supported.} \item{bw}{the smoothing bandwidth to be used. The kernels are scaled such that this is the standard deviation of the smoothing kernel. (Note this differs from the reference books cited below.) \code{bw} can also be a character string giving a rule to choose the bandwidth. See \code{\link{bw.nrd}}. \cr The default, \code{"nrd0"}, has remained the default for historical and compatibility reasons, rather than as a general recommendation, where e.g., \code{"SJ"} would rather fit, see also \bibcite{Venables and Ripley (2002)}. The specified (or computed) value of \code{bw} is multiplied by \code{adjust}. } \item{adjust}{the bandwidth used is actually \code{adjust*bw}. This makes it easy to specify values like \sQuote{half the default} bandwidth.} \item{kernel, window}{a character string giving the smoothing kernel to be used. This must partially match one of \code{"gaussian"}, \code{"rectangular"}, \code{"triangular"}, \code{"epanechnikov"}, \code{"biweight"}, \code{"cosine"} or \code{"optcosine"}, with default \code{"gaussian"}, and may be abbreviated to a unique prefix (single letter). \code{"cosine"} is smoother than \code{"optcosine"}, which is the usual \sQuote{cosine} kernel in the literature and almost MSE-efficient. However, \code{"cosine"} is the version used by S. } \item{weights}{numeric vector of non-negative observation weights, hence of same length as \code{x}. The default \code{NULL} is equivalent to \code{weights = rep(1/nx, nx)} where \code{nx} is the length of (the finite entries of) \code{x[]}. If \code{na.rm = TRUE} and there are \code{NA}'s in \code{x}, they \emph{and} the corresponding weights are removed before computations. In that case, when the original weights have summed to one, they are re-scaled to keep doing so. Note that weights are \emph{not} taken into account for automatic bandwidth rules, i.e., when \code{bw} is a string. When the weights are proportional to true counts \code{cn}, \code{density(x = rep(x, cn))} may be used instead of \code{weights}. } \item{width}{this exists for compatibility with S; if given, and \code{bw} is not, will set \code{bw} to \code{width} if this is a character string, or to a kernel-dependent multiple of \code{width} if this is numeric.} \item{give.Rkern}{logical; if true, \emph{no} density is estimated, and the \sQuote{canonical bandwidth} of the chosen \code{kernel} is returned instead.} \item{subdensity}{used only when \code{weights} are specified which do not sum to one. When true, it indicates that a \dQuote{sub-density} is desired and no warning should be signalled. By default, when false, a \code{\link{warning}} is signalled when the weights do not sum to one.} \item{warnWbw}{\code{\link{logical}}, used only when \code{weights} are specified \emph{and} \code{bw} is \code{character}, i.e., automatic bandwidth selection is chosen (as by default). When true (as by default), a \code{\link{warning}} is signalled to alert the user that automatic bandwidth selection will not take the weights into account and hence may be suboptimal.} \item{n}{the number of equally spaced points at which the density is to be estimated. When \code{n > 512}, it is rounded up to a power of 2 during the calculations (as \code{\link{fft}} is used) and the final result is interpolated by \code{\link{approx}}. So it almost always makes sense to specify \code{n} as a power of two. } \item{from,to}{the left and right-most points of the grid at which the density is to be estimated; the defaults are \code{cut * bw} outside of \code{range(x)}.} \item{cut}{by default, the values of \code{from} and \code{to} are \code{cut} bandwidths beyond the extremes of the data. This allows the estimated density to drop to approximately zero at the extremes.} \item{ext}{a positive extension factor, \code{4} by default. The values \code{from} and \code{to} are further extended on both sides to \code{lo <- from - ext * bw} and \code{up <- to + ext * bw} which are then used to build the grid used for the FFT and interpolation, see \code{n} above. Do not change unless you know what you are doing!} \item{old.coords}{\code{\link{logical}} to require pre-R 4.4.0 behaviour which gives too large values by a factor of about \eqn{(1 + 1/(2n-2))}.} \item{na.rm}{logical; if \code{TRUE}, missing values are removed from \code{x}. If \code{FALSE} any missing values cause an error.} \item{\dots}{further arguments for (non-default) methods.} } \description{ The (S3) generic function \code{density} computes kernel density estimates. Its default method does so with the given kernel and bandwidth for univariate observations. } \details{ The algorithm used in \code{density.default} disperses the mass of the empirical distribution function over a regular grid of at least 512 points and then uses the fast Fourier transform to convolve this approximation with a discretized version of the kernel and then uses linear approximation to evaluate the density at the specified points. The statistical properties of a kernel are determined by \eqn{\sigma^2_K = \int t^2 K(t) dt}{sig^2 (K) = int(t^2 K(t) dt)} which is always \eqn{= 1} for our kernels (and hence the bandwidth \code{bw} is the standard deviation of the kernel) and \eqn{R(K) = \int K^2(t) dt}{R(K) = int(K^2(t) dt)}.\cr MSE-equivalent bandwidths (for different kernels) are proportional to \eqn{\sigma_K R(K)}{sig(K) R(K)} which is scale invariant and for our kernels equal to \eqn{R(K)}. This value is returned when \code{give.Rkern = TRUE}. See the examples for using exact equivalent bandwidths. Infinite values in \code{x} are assumed to correspond to a point mass at \code{+/-Inf} and the density estimate is of the sub-density on \code{(-Inf, +Inf)}. } \value{ If \code{give.Rkern} is true, the number \eqn{R(K)}, otherwise an object with class \code{"density"} whose underlying structure is a list containing the following components. \item{x}{the \code{n} coordinates of the points where the density is estimated.} \item{y}{the estimated density values. These will be non-negative, but can be zero.} \item{bw}{the bandwidth used.} \item{n}{the sample size after elimination of missing values.} \item{call}{the call which produced the result.} \item{data.name}{the deparsed name of the \code{x} argument.} \item{has.na}{logical, for compatibility (always \code{FALSE}).} The \code{print} method reports \code{\link{summary}} values on the \code{x} and \code{y} components. } \references{ Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988). \emph{The New S Language}. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole (for S version). Scott, D. W. (1992). \emph{Multivariate Density Estimation. Theory, Practice and Visualization}. New York: Wiley. Sheather, S. J. and Jones, M. C. (1991). A reliable data-based bandwidth selection method for kernel density estimation. \emph{Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B}, \bold{53}, 683--690. \doi{10.1111/j.2517-6161.1991.tb01857.x}. %% \url{https://www.jstor.org/stable/2345597}. Silverman, B. W. (1986). \emph{Density Estimation}. London: Chapman and Hall. Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. (2002). \emph{Modern Applied Statistics with S}. New York: Springer. } \seealso{ \code{\link{bw.nrd}}, \code{\link{plot.density}}, \code{\link{hist}}; \code{\link{fft}} and \code{\link{convolve}} for the computational short cut used. } \examples{ require(graphics) plot(density(c(-20, rep(0,98), 20)), xlim = c(-4, 4)) # IQR = 0 # The Old Faithful geyser data d <- density(faithful$eruptions, bw = "sj") d plot(d) plot(d, type = "n") polygon(d, col = "wheat") ## Missing values: x <- xx <- faithful$eruptions x[i.out <- sample(length(x), 10)] <- NA doR <- density(x, bw = 0.15, na.rm = TRUE) lines(doR, col = "blue") points(xx[i.out], rep(0.01, 10)) ## Weighted observations: fe <- sort(faithful$eruptions) # has quite a few non-unique values ## use 'counts / n' as weights: dw <- density(unique(fe), weights = table(fe)/length(fe), bw = d$bw) utils::str(dw) ## smaller n: only 126, but identical estimate: stopifnot(all.equal(d[1:3], dw[1:3])) ## simulation from a density() fit: # a kernel density fit is an equally-weighted mixture. fit <- density(xx) N <- 1e6 x.new <- rnorm(N, sample(xx, size = N, replace = TRUE), fit$bw) plot(fit) lines(density(x.new), col = "blue") ## The available kernels: (kernels <- eval(formals(density.default)$kernel)) ## show the kernels in the R parametrization plot (density(0, bw = 1), xlab = "", main = "R's density() kernels with bw = 1") for(i in 2:length(kernels)) lines(density(0, bw = 1, kernel = kernels[i]), col = i) legend(1.5,.4, legend = kernels, col = seq(kernels), lty = 1, cex = .8, y.intersp = 1) ## show the kernels in the S parametrization plot(density(0, from = -1.2, to = 1.2, width = 2, kernel = "gaussian"), type = "l", ylim = c(0, 1), xlab = "", main = "R's density() kernels with width = 1") for(i in 2:length(kernels)) lines(density(0, width = 2, kernel = kernels[i]), col = i) legend(0.6, 1.0, legend = kernels, col = seq(kernels), lty = 1) ##-------- Semi-advanced theoretic from here on ------------- %% i.e. "secondary example" in a new help system ... ## Explore the old.coords TRUE --> FALSE change: set.seed(7); x <- runif(2^12) # N = 4096 den <- density(x) # -> grid of n = 512 points den0 <- density(x, old.coords = TRUE) summary(den0$y / den$y) # 1.001 ... 1.011 summary( den0$y / den$y - 1) # ~= 1/(2n-2) summary(1/ (den0$y / den$y - 1))# ~= 2n-2 = 1022 corr0 <- 1 - 1/(2*512-2) # 1 - 1/(2n-2) all.equal(den$y, den0$y * corr0)# ~ 0.0001 plot(den$x, (den0$y - den$y)/den$y, type='o', cex=1/4) title("relative error of density(runif(2^12), old.coords=TRUE)") abline(h = 1/1022, v = range(x), lty=2); axis(2, at=1/1022, "1/(2n-2)", las=1) ## The R[K] for our kernels: (RKs <- cbind(sapply(kernels, function(k) density(kernel = k, give.Rkern = TRUE)))) 100*round(RKs["epanechnikov",]/RKs, 4) ## Efficiencies bw <- bw.SJ(precip) ## sensible automatic choice plot(density(precip, bw = bw), main = "same sd bandwidths, 7 different kernels") for(i in 2:length(kernels)) lines(density(precip, bw = bw, kernel = kernels[i]), col = i) ## Bandwidth Adjustment for "Exactly Equivalent Kernels" h.f <- sapply(kernels, function(k)density(kernel = k, give.Rkern = TRUE)) (h.f <- (h.f["gaussian"] / h.f)^ .2) ## -> 1, 1.01, .995, 1.007,... close to 1 => adjustment barely visible.. plot(density(precip, bw = bw), main = "equivalent bandwidths, 7 different kernels") for(i in 2:length(kernels)) lines(density(precip, bw = bw, adjust = h.f[i], kernel = kernels[i]), col = i) legend(55, 0.035, legend = kernels, col = seq(kernels), lty = 1) } \keyword{distribution} \keyword{smooth}