Section: Software

MIXMOD software

Participants : Gilles Celeux [Correspondant] , Erwan Le Pennec.

Mixture model, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis

mixmod is being developed in collaboration with Christophe Biernacki, Florent Langrognet (Université de Franche-Comté) and Gérard Govaert (Université de Technologie de Compiègne). mixmod (mix ture mod elling) software fits mixture models to a given data set with either a clustering or a discriminant analysis purpose. mixmod uses a large variety of algorithms to estimate mixture parameters, e.g., EM, Classification EM, and Stochastic EM. They can be combined to create different strategies that lead to a sensible maximum of the likelihood (or completed likelihood) function. Moreover, different information criteria for choosing a parsimonious model, e.g. the number of mixture component, some of them favoring either a cluster analysis or a discriminant analysis view point, are included. Many Gaussian models for continuous variables and multinomial models for discrete variable are available. Written in C++, mixmod is interfaced with Scilab and Matlab . The software, the statistical documentation and also the user guide are available on the Internet at the following address: http://www.mixmod.org .

Since this 2010, mixmod has a proper graphical user interface (Version 1) which has been presented at the mixmod day in Lyon in December 2010. A version of mixmod in R is now available http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rmixmod/index.html .

Erwan Le Pennec with the help of Serge Cohen has proposed a spatial extension in which the mixture weights can vary spatialy.