# Mathematical Reviews 2001e:52024

P. J. Rousseeuw and M. Hubert [Discrete Comput. Geom. 22 (1999), no. 2, 167--176; MR 2000e:52024; J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 94 (1999), no. 446, 388--433; MR 2000i:62070] made the following two conjectures concerning the regression depth of points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space: Conjecture 1. For any $d$-dimensional set of $n$ points there exists a hyperplane having regression depth $\lceil\frac{n}{d+1}\rceil$. Conjecture 2. For any point set there exist a partition into $\lceil \frac{n}{d+1}\rceil$ subsets and a hyperplane that has nonzero regression depth in each subset. The authors prove the first conjecture and make some progress on the second. The problems arise in the context of robust regression and have a natural geometric formulation. The proofs are based on projective geometry and are consequently of a completely different nature from the usual proofs of theorems in the area of robust statistics. The authors also consider the computational aspects of the problems.

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