Shape-adaptive radial basis functions.

Radial basis functions for discrimination and regression have been used with some success in a wide variety of applications. Here, we investigate the optimal choice for the form of the basis functions and present an iterative strategy for obtaining the function in a regression context using a conjugate gradient-based algorithm together with a nonparametric smoother. This is developed in a discrimination framework using the concept of optimal scaling. Results are presented for a range of simulated and real data sets.