Flexible modelling in statistics: past, present and future

Ley, Christophe

Journal de la société française de statistique, Tome 156 (2015) no. 1, pp. 76-96.

Dans des temps où de plus en plus de données deviennent accessibles et où ces données sont de plus en plus complexes (asymétrie évidente, queues lourdes ou légères), la modélisation flexible est devenue une tâche essentielle pour les statisticiens ainsi que pour les chercheurs et praticiens de domaines tels que l’économie, la finance ou les sciences environnementales. Ceci est reflété par la richesse de propositions existantes pour des distributions flexibles ; des exemples connus sont la skew-normale d’Azzalini, la $g$-et-$h$ de Tukey, des distributions de mixture ainsi que des distributions deux-morceaux, pour ne citer que celles-là. Mon but dans cet article est de donner une introduction à ce domaine de recherche, destinée à être utile à la fois pour des novices et des professionnels du domaine. Après une brève description du courant de recherche lui-même, je vais raconter l’histoire passionnante de la modélisation flexible, mettant en vedette des héros emblématiques comme Edgeworth et Pearson, puis je vais décrire trois familles de distributions flexibles qui figurent parmi les plus utilisées, et finalement donner un aperçu sur le futur de la modélisation flexible en posant des questions ouvertes stimulantes.

In times where more and more data become available and where the data exhibit rather complex structures (significant departure from symmetry, heavy or light tails), flexible modelling has become an essential task for statisticians as well as researchers and practitioners from domains such as economics, finance or environmental sciences. This is reflected by the wealth of existing proposals for flexible distributions; well-known examples are Azzalini’s skew-normal, Tukey’s $g$-and-$h$, mixture and two-piece distributions, to cite but these. My aim in the present paper is to provide an introduction to this research field, intended to be useful both for novices and professionals of the domain. After a description of the research stream itself, I will narrate the gripping history of flexible modelling, starring emblematic heroes from the past such as Edgeworth and Pearson, then depict three of the most used flexible families of distributions, and finally provide an outlook on future flexible modelling research by posing challenging open questions.

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