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An Algorithm for Optimal Partitioning of Data on an Interval

Brad Jackson, Jeffrey D. Scargle, David Barnes, Sundararajan Arabhi, Alina Alt, Peter Gioumousis, Elyus Gwin, Paungkaew Sangtrakulcharoen, Linda Tan, Tun Tao Tsai

math.NAarXiv:math/0309285

Abstract

Many signal processing problems can be solved by maximizing the fitness of a segmented model over all possible partitions of the data interval. This letter describes a simple but powerful algorithm that searches the exponentially large space of partitions of N data points in time O(N2). The algorithm is guaranteed to find the exact global optimum, automatically determines the model order (the number of segments), has a convenient real-time mode, can be extended to higher dimensional data spaces, and solves a surprising variety of problems in signal detection and characterization, density estimation, cluster analysis and classification.

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