Interval joint robust regression method.

• The paper provides a robust regression method for interval-valued variables. • The objective function of the method considers the full interval information. • The computation of the sum of squares errors uses exponential-type kernel functions. • Outliers have a small weight for both center and radius parameter estimates. • Applications on synthetic and real data sets corroborate the proposed method. Interval-valued data are needed to manage either the uncertainty related to measurements, or the variability inherent to the description of complex objects representing group of individuals. A number of regression methods suitable to interval variables describing variability of complex objects are already available. However, less attention has been given to methods that, simultaneously, take into account the full interval information and are resistant to interval outlier observations, even with the frequent presence of atypical observations on interval-valued data sets. This paper proposes a new robust linear regression method for interval variables, where the presence of outliers either in the center or in the radius penalize both the center and the radius regression models. Moreover, the interval observations with outliers on both center and radius are more penalized than those observations with outliers only in the center (or in the radius). Besides, this paper provides a suitable iterative algorithm to estimate the parameters of the proposed method. The algorithm estimates the parameters of the center (or of the radius) model taking into account both information of the center and the radius. The convergence and time complexity of the iterative algorithm are also presented. Finally, the performance of the new method is compared with some previous robust regression approaches and evaluated on synthetic and real interval-valued data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]