Statdepth: a package for analysis of functional and pointcloud data using statistical depth

TL;DR

Statdepth is a Python package that enables analysis of complex time-variant and multidimensional data using the concept of functional depth, extending traditional statistical methods to functional data.

Contribution

The paper introduces statdepth, a novel Python package that applies functional depth to analyze time-variant and multidimensional data, bridging a gap in existing statistical tools.

Findings

Enables descriptive and comparative analysis of functional data

Extends L-statistics to functional data trajectories

Provides a practical tool for functional data analysis

Abstract

Laboratory scientists are well equipped with statistical tools for univariate data, yet many phenomena of scientific interest are time-variant or otherwise multidimensional. Functional data analysis is one way of approaching such data: by representing these more complex data as single data points in a mathematical space of functions. The mathematical concept of functional depth provides a notion of centrality which allows for descriptive statistics and some comparative statistics on these data. Here, we present statdepth, a Python package for functional depth-based analyses which naturally extends familiar single-data-point L-statistics and related methods to time-variant data trajectories or multidimensional data.