Archetype analysis: A new subspace outlier detection approach

The problem of detecting outliers in multivariate data sets with continuous numerical features is addressed by a new method. This method combines projections into relevant subspaces by archetype analysis with a nearest neighbor algorithm, through an appropriate ensemble of the results. Our method is able to detect an anomaly in a simple data set with a linear correlation of two features, while other methods fail to recognize that anomaly. Our method performs among top in an extensive comparison with 23 state-of-the-art outlier detection algorithms with several benchmark data sets. Finally, a novel industrial data set is introduced, and an outlier analysis is carried out to improve the fit of footwear, since this kind of analysis has never been fully exploited in the anthropometric field.