Sufficient Dimension Reduction via Distance Covariance

We introduce a novel approach to sufficient dimension-reduction problems using distance covariance. Our method requires very mild conditions on the predictors. It estimates the central subspace effectively even when many predictors are categorical or discrete. Our method keeps the model-free advantage without estimating link function. Under regularity conditions, root-n consistency and asymptotic normality are established for our estimator. We compare the performance of our method with some existing dimension-reduction methods by simulations and find that our method is very competitive and robust across a number of models. We also analyze the Auto MPG data to demonstrate the efficacy of our method. Supplemental materials for this article are available online.