When a data set can be considered compositional?

Abstract

Traditionally, compositional data has been identified with closed data, and the simplex has been considered as the natural sample space of this kind of data. In our opinion, the emphasis on the constrained nature of compositional data has contributed to mask its real nature. More crucial than the constraining property of compositional data is the scale-invariant property of this kind of data. Indeed, when we are considering only few parts of a full composition we are not working with constrained data but our data are still compositional. We believe that it is necessary to give a more precise definition of composition. This is the aim of this oral contribution