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The mixture of factor analyzers model was first introduced over 20 years ago and, in the meantime, has been extended to several non-Gaussian analogues. In general, these analogues account for situations with heavy tailed and/or skewed clusters. An approach is introduced that unifies many of these approaches into one very general model: the mixture of hidden truncation hyperbolic factor analyzers (MHTHFA) model. In the process of doing this, a hidden truncation hyperbolic factor analysis model is also introduced. The MHTHFA model is illustrated for clustering as well as semi-supervised classification using two real datasets.

A hidden truncation hyperbolic (HTH) distribution is introduced and finite mixtures thereof are applied for clustering. A stochastic representation of the HTH distribution is given and a density is derived. A hierarchical representation is described, which aids in parameter estimation. Finite mixtures of HTH distributions are presented and their identifiability is proved. The convexity of the HTH distribution is discussed, which is important in clustering applications, and some theoretical results in this direction are presented. The relationship between the HTH distribution and other skewed distributions in the literature is discussed. Illustrations are provided --- both of the HTH distribution and application of finite mixtures thereof for clustering.

A family of parsimonious shifted asymmetric Laplace mixture models is introduced. We extend the mixture of factor analyzers model to the shifted asymmetric Laplace distribution. Imposing constraints on the constitute parts of the resulting decomposed component scale matrices leads to a family of parsimonious models. An explicit two-stage parameter estimation procedure is described, and the Bayesian information criterion and the integrated completed likelihood are compared for model selection. This novel family of models is applied to real data, where it is compared to its Gaussian analogue within clustering and classification paradigms.

Mixtures of skew-t distributions offer a flexible choice for model-based clustering. A mixture model of this sort can be implemented using a variety of formulations of the skew-t distribution. Herein we develop a mixture of skew-t factor analyzers model for clustering of high-dimensional data using a flexible formulation of the skew-t distribution. Methodological details of our approach, which represents an extension of the mixture of factor analyzers model to a flexible skew-t distribution, are outlined and details of parameter estimation are provided. Clustering results are illustrated and compared to an alternative formulation of the mixture of skew-t factor analyzers model as well as the mixture of factor analyzers model.

A mixture of common skew-t factor analyzers model is introduced for model-based clustering of high-dimensional data. By assuming common component factor loadings, this model allows clustering to be performed in the presence of a large number of mixture components or when the number of dimensions is too large to be well-modelled by the mixtures of factor analyzers model or a variant thereof. Furthermore, assuming that the component densities follow a skew-t distribution allows robust clustering of skewed data. The alternating expectation-conditional maximization algorithm is employed for parameter estimation. We demonstrate excellent clustering performance when our model is applied to real and simulated data.This paper marks the first time that skewed common factors have been used.

In this paper, we introduce a mixture of skew-t factor analyzers as well as a family of mixture models based thereon. The mixture of skew-t distributions model that we use arises as a limiting case of the mixture of generalized hyperbolic distributions. Like their Gaussian and t-distribution analogues, our mixture of skew-t factor analyzers are very well-suited to the model-based clustering of high-dimensional data. Imposing constraints on components of the decomposed covariance parameter results in the development of eight flexible models. The alternating expectation-conditional maximization algorithm is used for model parameter estimation and the Bayesian information criterion is used for model selection. The models are applied to both real and simulated data, giving superior clustering results compared to a well-established family of Gaussian mixture models.