Finding suspected causes of measurement error in multivariate environmental data

Abstract

AbstractEnvironmental data are usually multivariate, with the variables conforming to some correlation structure. Occasionally, measurements which do not conform in structure or magnitude may occur in one or more variables. It is important (1) to characterize these discordancies in terms of the disturbed variables and the direction and magnitude of the anomalous error and (2) to associate each discordant observation with a specific cause of measurement error in order to prevent further mismeasurement. We describe a procedure for identifying suspected causes of discordant observations in otherwise multinormal data sets. Variables are assigned to groups, each of which is associated with a specific cause of measurement error. Discordant observations are identified with the generalized distance test or the multivariate kurtosis test. Suspected causes of measurement error are identified by repeating the tests with one of the groups of variables omitted in each analysis. The procedures are evaluated with simulated data sets having a correlation structure similar to that of a large environmental data set.