A Cramér-von Mises test of uniformity on the hypersphere

08/25/2020

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by   Eduardo García-Portugués, et al.

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Testing uniformity of a sample supported on the hypersphere is one of the first steps when analysing multivariate data for which only the directions (and not the magnitudes) are of interest. In this work, a projection-based Cramér-von Mises test of uniformity on the hypersphere is introduced. This test can be regarded as an extension of the well-known Watson test of circular uniformity to the hypersphere. The null asymptotic distribution of the test statistic is obtained and, via numerical experiments, shown to be tractable and practical. A novel study on the uniformity of the distribution of craters on Venus illustrates the usage of the test.