Archetypal symbolic objects

Abstract

Symbolic Data Analysis has represented an important innovation in statistics since its first presentation by E. Diday in the late 1980s. Most of the interest has been for the statistical analysis of Symbolic Data that represent complex data structure where variables can assume more than just a single value. Thus, Symbolic Data allow to describe classes of statistical units as a whole. Furthermore, other entities can be defined in the realm of Symbolic data. These entities are the Symbolic objects, defined in terms of the relationships between two different knowledge levels. This article aims at introducing a new type of SO based on the archetypal analysis.