The modal age of Statistics
This is an incremental survey that addresses statistical problems for researchers by reviewing and extending modal methods.
The paper surveys traditional approaches to mode estimation and explores the application of modern modal methodology to unrelated fields, highlighting its unexpected solutions to classical statistical problems like clustering and regression.
Recently, a number of statistical problems have found an unexpected solution by inspecting them through a "modal point of view". These include classical tasks such as clustering or regression. This has led to a renewed interest in estimation and inference for the mode. This paper offers an extensive survey of the traditional approaches to mode estimation and explores the consequences of applying this modern modal methodology to other, seemingly unrelated, fields.