Synthetic data generation by probabilistic PCA

It is well known to generate synthetic data sets by the sequential regression multiple imputation (SRMI) method. The R-package synthpop are widely used for generating synthetic data by the SRMI approaches. In this paper, I suggest generating synthetic data based on the probabilistic principal component analysis (PPCA) method. Two simple data sets are used for a simulation study to compare the SRMI and PPCA approaches. Simulation results demonstrate that pairwise coe fficients in synthetic data sets by PPCA can be closer to original ones than by SRMI. Furthermore, for the various data types that PPCA applications are well established, such as time series data, the PPCA approach can be extended to generate synthetic data sets.