covariance matrices
Summary
A covariance matrix generalizes the idea of variance to multiple dimensions, where the i-th j-th element in the covariance matrix is the covariance between the i-th and j-th random variables. Covariance matrices are common throughout both statistics and machine learning and often arise when dealing with multivariate distributions.
Context
This concept has the prerequisites:
- covariance
- positive definite matrices (The covariance matrix is a PSD matrix.)
Goals
- Understand how to calculate the entries of a covariance matrix
- Understand the difference between positive and negative covariances
Core resources (we're sorry, we haven't finished tracking down resources for this concept yet)
Supplemental resources (the following are optional, but you may find them useful)
-Free-
→ The Analysis Factor
→ Wikipedia
See also
- The multivariate Gaussian is a widely used distribution parameterized in terms of a mean vector and covariance matrix.
- The Cauchy-Schwartz inequality for covariance follows from the fact that covariance matrices are PSD.
- Principal component analysis is a data analysis method applied to the covariance matrix.