hermite.expansion: Calculation of Hermite expansion for detection function likelihoods
Description
Computes the Hermite expansion terms used in the likelihood of a distance analysis.
More generally, will compute a Hermite expansion of any numeric vector.
Usage
hermite.expansion(x, expansions)
Value
A matrix of size length(x) X expansions. The columns of this matrix are the Hermite polynomial expansions of x.
Column 1 is the first expansion term of x, column 2 is the second expansion term of x, and so on up to expansions.
Arguments
x
In a distance analysis, x is a numeric vector containing the proportion of a strip
transect's half-width at which a group of individuals was sighted. If \(w\) is the strip transect
half-width or maximum sighting distance, and \(d\) is the perpendicular off-transect distance
to a sighted group (\(d\leq w\)), x is usually \(d/w\). More generally, x
is a vector of numeric values.
expansions
A scalar specifying the number of expansion terms to compute. Must be one of the integers 1, 2, 3, or 4.
Details
There are, in general, several expansions that can be called Hermite. The Hermite expansion used here is: