Implementation of Multivariate Exponential Power Distribution in Discrimination and Classification of Psychological Data and Other applications

Recent advances have shown that some multivariate psychological data are deviating from usual normal assumption either in the tails or kurtosis. Thereby, allowing the call for modelling of such data using more robust elliptically contoured density which includes the normal distribution as a special case. This allowed more flexibility at the kurtosis and tail regions, which is better in handling non-normality in data analysis and also lower the cost of misclassification. The present study employed a robust model for such cases in the context of discrimination and classification of multivariate psychological disorder data using multivariate exponential distribution as an underlining model. Parameters were estimated using the method of maximum likelihood estimation and the discrimination and classification were based on the log likelihood ratio approach. The resulting models relied solidly on the shape parameter, which regulate the tails and the kurtosis, thereby allowed flexibility. This method enable us to lower the cost of misclassification. Some other areas of applications were also considered in the paper.