Modeling and prediction of children's growth data via functional principal component analysis.

We use the functional principal component analysis (FPCA) to model and predict the weight growth in children. In particular, we examine how the approach can help discern growth patterns of underweight children relative to their normal counterparts, and whether a commonly used transformation to normality plays any constructive roles in a predictive model based on the FPCA. Our work supplements the conditional growth charts developed by Wei and He (2006) by constructing a predictive growth model based on a small number of principal components scores on individual's past.