The Influence Function as an Aid in Outlier Detection in Discriminant Analysis

The influence function is used to develop criteria for detecting outliers in discriminant analysis. For Mahalanobis' D2, the influence function is a quadratic function of the deviation of the discriminant score for the perturbed observation from the discriminant score for the mean of the corresponding group. A X2 approximation to the null distribution of the influence function values appears to be suitable for graphical representation.