1.4.1 Addedd function for comparing distributions, improved graphical comparisons comp.cont is a NEW function for empirical comparison of the marginal distributions of the same numerical variable(s) but estimated from two different data sources plotCont plots and compares also the empirical cumulative distribution function estimated from two different data sources ###################################################################################################################### 1.4.0 Addedd functions for plotting results, changes to some code for better management of the NAs NND.hotdeck and RANDwNND.hotdeck NO longer trasform the categorical matching variables in dummies when the chosen distance function is defined only for numerical variables; in practice, mixed-type matching variables can only be used with the Gower's distance fact2dummy: when a NA is observed for a categorical variable then the function puts NAs in all the dummy variables generated from it pw.assoc discards NAs before calculation of the associaione or PRE measures; removal follows the pairwise deletion rule (units where one of both the values are missing are discarded) plotTab is a NEW function for comparing the marginal distributions of the same categorical variable(s) but estimated from two different data sources plotCont is a NEW function for comparing the marginal distributions of the same numerical variable but estimated from two different data sources plotBounds is a NEW function providing a graphical summary of the width of the Frechet Bounds estimated with the Frechet.bounds.cat function ######################################################################################################################### 1.3.0 changes in the functions related to uncertainty investigation when dealing with categorical variables Frechet.bounds.cat now permits to align marginal distributions of X variables via IPF algorithm (previously harmonization had to be done befor calling it by using harmonize.x function) Fbwidths.by.x provides penalty measures because of the increase of cells to estimate when increasing the number of Xs. Sparsness of tables is explicitly considered. New function selMtc.by.unc() permits to identify best subset of matching variables which minimize a penalized uncertainty estimate, as in D'Orazio, Di Zio, Scanu 2017 paper (see ref in help pages) Updates in pw.assoc() to allow computation of bias corrected Cramer's V, mutual information (also normalized), AIC and BIC. Results can be organized in a data.frame. Changes in the documentation layout to achieve coherence with documentation of other functions in the package Please note that Vignette is frozen to StatMatch 1.2.5, therefore it will not provide new feauter related to investigation of uncertainty and more in general selecting of matching variables. New vignette related to uncertainty topic is expected to be realesed in future. ##################################################################################################################### 1.2.5 gower.dist is faster and more efficient due improvements of Jan van der Laan (also thanks to Ton de Waal ) NND.hotdeck allows performing constrained search of donors, allowing donor to be selected not more than k times (k>=1). argument k is set by the user fixed a minor bug in RANDwNND.hotdeck (not affecting results) richer output in Frechet.bounds.cat and Fb.widths.byx 1.2.4 added the new function pBayes for applying pseudo-Bayes estimator to sparse contingency tables modified comb.samples to handle a continuous target variable (Y or Z) Faster versions of Frechet.bound.cat and Fbwidths.by.x. Fbwidths.by.x now provides a richer output. 1.2.3 corrected a bug in RANDwNND.hotdeck. Thanks to Kirill Muller 1.2.2 added 3 data sets used in the function's help pages and in the vignette modified the RANDwNND.hotdeck function to identify the subset of the donors by simple comparing the values of a single matching variable Minor modification of the hotdeck functions to handle and monitor the processing when dealing with donation classes 1.2.1 now Frechet.bounds.cat() can be called just to compute the uncertainty bounds when no X variables are available. RANDwNND.hotdeck can search for the closest k nearest neighbours by using the function nn2() in the package RANN (wrap of the Artificial Neural Network implemented in the package ANN). It is very fast and efficient when dealing with large data sources. Fix of a minor bug in mixed.mtc() 1.2.0 new function comp.prop() for computing similarities/dissimilarities between marginal/joint distributions of one or more categorical variables new function pw.assoc() to compute pairwise association measures among categorical response variable and a series of categorical predictors rankNND.hotdeck() can perform constrained matching too rankNND.hotdeck(), NND.hotdeck() and mixed.mtc() solve constrained problems more efficiently and faster by using solve_LSAP() in package "clue" or (slower) by means of functions in the package "lpSolve". It is no more possible to solve constrained problems by means of functions in package "optmatch" NDD.hotdeck(), RDDwNND.hotdeck() and rankNND.hotdeck() are more efficient in handling donation classes (thanks to Alexis Eidelman for suggestion). fixed a bug in mahalanobis.dist (thanks to Bruno C. Vidigal) 1.1.0 The function comb.samples() now allows to derive predictions at micro level for the target variables Y and Z 1.0.5 fixed some minor bugs 1.0.4 fixed some minor bugs 1.0.3 now mixed.mtc() can handle also categorical common variables fixed a bug in comb.samples() when handling factor levels new error messages in RANDwNND.hotdeck() when computing ditances between units with missing values 1.0.2 new function mahalanobis.dist() to compute the mahalanobis distance fixed a bug in mixed.mtc() when computing the range of admissible values for rho_yz fixed a bug in NND.hotdeck() and RANDwNND.hotdeck() when managing the row.names 1.0.1 new functions harmonize.x() and comb.samples() to perform statistical matching when dealing with complex sample survey data via weight calibration. new function Frechet.bounds.cat() to explore uncertainty when dealing with categorical variables. The function Fbwidths.by.x() permits to identify the subset of the common variables that performs better in reducing uncertainty New function rankNND.hotdeck() to perform rank hot deck distance Update of RANDwNND.hotdeck() to use donor weight in selecting a donor new function maximum.dist() that computes distances according to the L^Inf norm. A rank transformation of the variables can be used. 0.8 fixed some bugs in NND.hotdeck() and RANDwNND.hotdeck()