intData: Interval Data Constructor

In AIDA: Analysis of Interval DAta

Interval Data Constructor

Description

Constructs an interval data object.

Usage

intData(
  macrodata,
  Seq = c("AllLb_AllUb", "AllCen_AllRng", "LbUb_VarbyVar", "CenRng_VarbyVar"),
  LatentParam = NULL,
  LatentCase = c("U_id_symmetric", "U_id", "General"),
  LatentDist = c("Unif", "Triang", "TNorm", "InvTri", "Beta", "KDE", "Degenerated"),
  TriangParam = 0,
  BetaParam.a = 1,
  BetaParam.b = 1,
  Umicro = NULL,
  estimate.DistParam = FALSE,
  VarNames = NULL,
  ObsNames = row.names(macrodata),
  NbMicroUnits = integer(0)
)

Arguments

macrodata	A data frame or matrix containing the macrodata.
Seq	Format of macrodata if it is a data frame or matrix. Available options are: "AllLb_AllUb": All lower bounds followed by all upper bounds, in the same variable order. "AllCen_AllRng": All Centers followed by all Ranges, in the same variable order. "LbUb_VarbyVar": Lower bounds followed by upper bounds, variable by variable. "CenRng_VarbyVar": Centers followed by Ranges, variable by variable.
LatentParam	A list with the parameters of the latent variables. Expects a list with a single number if LatentCase is "U_id_symmetric", a list of two numbers if LatentCase is "U_id", and a list of two matrices if LatentCase is "General", as in: "U_id_symmetric": The latent variables are identically distributed and symmetric, so its parameters are: \delta=\mathbb{E}(U^2)/4 "U_id": The latent variables are identically distributed, so its parameters are: \delta=\mathbb{E}(U^2)/4 \mathbb{E}(U) "General": The latent variables do not have any nice properties, so its parameters are: [\boldsymbol{\mathfrak{E}}_{UU}]_{j\ell}=\mathcal{E}(U_j,U_\ell), j\neq \ell, with \mathcal{E}(U_j,U_\ell)=\int_0^1 F_{U_j}^{-1}(t) F_{U_\ell}^{-1}(t) \, dt, and [\boldsymbol{\mathfrak{E}}_{UU}]_{jj}=\mathbb{E}(U_j^2), j,\ell=1,\dots,p \boldsymbol{\Psi}=\text{Diag}(\mathbb{E}(U_1),\dots,\mathbb{E}(U_p))
LatentCase	A string specifying which of the three scenarios applies to the latent variables: "U_id_symmetric": The case where the latent variables are identically distributed and symmetric. "U_id": The case where the latent variables are identically distributed. "General": The case where the latent variables do not have any nice properties. Defaults to "U_id_symmetric".
LatentDist	A string or vector of strings specifying the distribution(s) of the latent variables. If the variables are identically distributed it can be one of ("Unif", "Triang", "TNorm", "InvTri", "Beta", "KDE", "Degenerated"), if not a vector must be provided with the distribution for each variable. The default is "Unif" if LatentCase="U_id_symmetric" or if Umicro is not provided, and "KDE" if LatentCase="General".
TriangParam	Mode of the triangular distribution. If the latent variables are identically distributed, it is only necessary to provide a number, if not a vector is needed. The default is 0.
BetaParam.a	Parameter alpha of the Beta distribution. If the latent variables are identically distributed, it is only necessary to provide a number, if not a vector is needed. The default is 1.
BetaParam.b	Parameter beta of the Beta distribution. If the latent variables are identically distributed, it is only necessary to provide a number, if not a vector is needed. The default is 1.
Umicro	Latent microdata observations. Needed if estimate.DistParam is TRUE or LatentDist is "KDE".
estimate.DistParam	Logical parameter indicating if estimation of the parameters of the latent distributions should be performed in the case of triangular or Beta distributions. Can only be set to TRUE if LatentCase="General". The default is FALSE.
VarNames	A character vector of variable names.
ObsNames	A character vector of observation names.
NbMicroUnits	An integer vector indicating the number of individual observations (microdata) aggregated by interval (macrodata).

Value

An object of class intData.

References

Oliveira, M. R., Pinheiro, D., & Oliveira, L. (2025). Location and association measures for interval-valued data based on Mallows' distance. arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.05105. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05105

Adapted from package MAINT.Data (https://cran.r-project.org/package=MAINT.Data).

Examples

# Load microdat and macrodata
data(creditcard)
CreditCard_microdata <- creditcard$microdata
CreditCard_min_max <- creditcard$min_max

# Create an intData object using the min_max component of the dataset 
# Assume a continuous uniform distribution for the latent variables 
# This corresponds to LatentCase="U_id_symmetric"
# This is the default setting for the intData class
credit_card_int_unif <- intData(CreditCard_min_max, 
                                Seq = "LbUb_VarbyVar", 
                                VarNames = colnames(CreditCard_microdata)[3:7])

AIDA documentation built on Nov. 4, 2026, 9:06 a.m.