cov.wt
Weighted Covariance Estimation
Description
Returns a list containing estimates of the covariance matrix and  
of the mean vector for the data, and optionally of the correlation matrix. 
Usage
cov.wt(x, wt = rep(1/nrow(x), nrow(x)), cor = FALSE, center = TRUE, 
    method = c("unbiased", "ML"))
Arguments
| x | 
a matrix of data.  Rows represent observations and columns represent variables. 
Only finite values are accepted. 
 | 
| wt | 
a vector of weights for each observation. 
This vector must have the same length as the number of rows in x. Missing  
values are not accepted. Weights should not be negative.
 | 
| cor | 
a logical flag. If TRUE, then the estimated correlation matrix is  
returned as a component of the answer. The default is FALSE.
 | 
| center | 
a logical value or a numeric vector providing the center about which  
the covariance is to be taken. 
-  If center is TRUE (the default), then the mean of each column is used. 
 -  If center is FALSE, then zero is used for each variable. 
 -  If center is numeric, then its length must equal the number of columns 
in x. 
  
 | 
| method | 
a character string specifying whether to use the unbiased estimator (the default)
or the maximum likelihood estimator of the covariance matrix.
 | 
 
Value
returns a list with the following components: 
| cov | 
the estimated covariance matrix. 
 | 
| center | 
an estimate for the center (mean) of the data. 
 | 
| wt | 
the weights that were used in the computation. 
This is returned only if the wt argument was given. 
 | 
| n.obs | 
the number of observations (rows) in x. 
 | 
| cor | 
the estimated correlation matrix for the data. 
This is returned only if the input cor is TRUE. 
 | 
 
See Also
Examples
cov.wt(Sdatasets::freeny.x)  # unweighted estimate 
cov.wt(Sdatasets::freeny.x, center=FALSE)  # take covariance about zero