Title: New estimators for directional data Authors:  Adrian Fischer - Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) [presenting]
Robert Gaunt - The University of Manchester (United Kingdom)
Yvik Swan - Universite libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
Abstract: In Stein's method, one can characterize probability distributions with differential operators. These characterizations are used to obtain new point estimators for the parameters of spherical distributions. As a consequence of the usually simple form of the operator, explicit estimators are obtained in cases where standard methods, such as maximum likelihood estimation, require a numerical procedure to calculate the estimate. Among others, competitive estimators are obtained for the concentration parameter of the Fisher-von Mises distribution and an explicit estimator for all parameters of the Fisher-Bingham distribution.