The options argument can contain one or more of the options shown below.

to_plot = truefalse

The range of the data samples will likely change with the removal of some points, and so the original scope of the data would be lost. This would make it impractical to make any kind of comparison with a plot of the data, since it would now be on a different range and scale than the original data. Setting this option to true will return a line after the returned data samples which will set the viewing range to be as though all the data is present. The returned structure will be of the form view = [range(s)] and will be used as a plot option by the corresponding plot function. The default value for this option is false.

return_same = truefalse

This option specifies whether or not the returned data samples should be returned as the same data type as they were entered in. The default value for this option is false.

The Excise command calculates how densely clustered every point of data is with respect to every other point of data. A certain number of points, determined by the magnitude of p, are removed from the data and the remaining points are returned as an expression sequence of one dimensional Arrays.  Excise returns the same number of data samples as are passed into the function.

If p is a positive number between zero and one, and n is the number of points passed to Excise, then p*n of the least densely clustered points are excised, and (1-p)*n of the most densely clustered points will be returned.

If p is a negative number between zero and negative one, and n is the number of points passed to Excise, then (-p)*n of the most densely clustered points are excised, and (1+p)*n of the least densely clustered points will be returned.

The parameters X, Y and Z are the data samples to be excised. Each can be given as a Vector, Matrix, Array, or list, though they do not all have to be of the same type. They also do not need to be one dimensional, but will be treated as though they are. The first data sample, X, is required, but the second and third data samples, Y and Z respectively, are optional. Note that all data samples must have the same number of elements.

$\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{Statistics}\right)\:$

$\mathrm{data1}≔\mathrm{Array}\left(\left[\left[1\,2\right]\,\left[3\,4\right]\,\left[5\,6\right]\,\left[7\,8\right]\right]\right)\:$

$\mathrm{ret1}≔\mathrm{Excise}\left(0.5\,\mathrm{data1}\right)$

$\mathrm{ret1}≔\left[\begin{array}{cccc}4.& 5.& 3.& 6.\end{array}\right]$

$\mathrm{type}\left(\mathrm{ret1}\,\mathrm{Array}\right)$

$\mathrm{true}$

$\mathrm{Excise}\left(-0.5\,\mathrm{data1}\right)$

$\left[\begin{array}{cccc}8.& 1.& 7.& 2.\end{array}\right]$

$\mathrm{data2}≔\left[2\,4\,6\,8\,10\,12\,14\,16\,18\,20\,22\,24\right]$

$\mathrm{data2}≔\left[2\,4\,6\,8\,10\,12\,14\,16\,18\,20\,22\,24\right]$

$\mathrm{ret2}≔\mathrm{Excise}\left(\frac{2}{3}\,\mathrm{data2}\,\mathrm{return\_same}\right)$

$\mathrm{ret2}≔\left[14.\,12.\,10.\,16.\right]$

$\mathrm{type}\left(\mathrm{ret2}\,\mathrm{list}\right)$

$\mathrm{true}$

$\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{Statistics}\right)\:$

$A≔\mathrm{Sample}\left(\mathrm{RandomVariable}\left(\mathrm{Normal}\left(0\,1\right)\right)\,500\right)\:$

$B≔\mathrm{Sample}\left(\mathrm{RandomVariable}\left(\mathrm{Normal}\left(0\,1\right)\right)\,500\right)\:$

$\mathrm{ScatterPlot}\left(A\,B\right)$

$\mathrm{ScatterPlot}\left(\mathrm{Excise}\left(0.5\,A\,B\,\mathrm{to\_plot}\right)\right)$