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4 votes
1 answer
771 views

Maximal component of a multivariate Gaussian distribution

Suppose you have a general random Gaussian vector $\mathbf{X}\sim\mathcal{N}\left(\boldsymbol{\mu},\boldsymbol{\Sigma}\right)$. I'm looking for the simple way to calculate the distribution of the ...
Daniel Soudry's user avatar
23 votes
7 answers
5k views

What makes Gaussian distributions special?

I'm looking for as many different arguments or derivations as possible that support the informal claim that Gaussian/Normal distributions are "the most fundamental" among all distributions. ...
13 votes
1 answer
10k views

KL divergence and mixture of Gaussians

Do we have an exact formula to compute the KL divergence between 2 mixtures of Gaussians (i.e convex combinations of a finite number of Gaussian distributions)? If not exactly known, are there good ...
gradstudent's user avatar
  • 2,246
6 votes
1 answer
264 views

Which orthant probabilities are the largest? (For a multivariate normal distribution)

I have a $k$-dimensional multivariate normal distribution $X∼N(0,\Sigma)$ with covariance matrix $\Sigma$. $\Sigma$ has two distinct eigenvalues, say $\lambda_1 > \lambda_2$, with orthogonal ...
Matthew Harrison-Trainor's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Explicit constant for Carbery–Wright inequality

The Carbery–Wright inequality is a seminal result about the anti-concentration of polynomials of Gaussian random variables. See e.g. Meka, Nguyen, and Vu - Anti-concentration for polynomials of ...
user134977's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
2k views

Show that $\mathbb{P}[ a V\le Z| V+Z]=\mathbb{P}[aV \ge Z| V+Z] \text{ a.s.} $ iff $V=\frac{1}{\sqrt{a}}Z'$ where $Z'$ is standard normal

Consider a pair of independent random variables $(V,Z)$ where $Z$ is standard normal. Now suppose that the following equality holds: for a given $a>0$ \begin{align} \mathbb{P}[ a V\le Z| V+Z]=\...
Boby's user avatar
  • 671
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Normal approximation to the pointwise/Hadamard/Schur product of two multivariate Gaussian/normal random variables

Let $X \sim \mathcal{N}\left( {{\mu _x},\sigma _x^2} \right)$ and $Y \sim \mathcal{N}\left( {{\mu _y},\sigma _y^2} \right)$ be two univariate and independent Gaussian/normal random variables and let $...
Fabrice Pautot's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
872 views

Estimating the average of two gaussians' mean

Assume that $X\sim \mathcal N(\sigma_1,\mu_1)$ and $Y\sim \mathcal N(\sigma_2,\mu_2)$. I want to estimate $\frac{\mu_1+\mu_2}{2}$ after observing $X,Y$. In my setting, $\sigma_1,\sigma_2$ are known ...
R B's user avatar
  • 618
2 votes
1 answer
124 views

Limiting behavior of $k^{th}$ order statistics of n non-i.i.d chi square random variables

This is related to one of my previous questions here. Let $(Z_1, Z_2, \ldots, Z_n)\sim N(0, \Omega)$, where $\Omega = (1-\mu) I_{n\times n} + \mu \boldsymbol{1}_n\boldsymbol{1}_n^\top $. Here $\...
De vinci's user avatar
  • 399
1 vote
1 answer
208 views

Extreme confusion with the exact meaning of Gaussian measure with "translation-invariant" covariance

In physics literature, the covariance of a Gaussian measure $\mu$ on a function space is denoted as $C(x,y)$. Moreover, they say that if the covariance is translation-invariant, then actually $C(x,y)=\...
Isaac's user avatar
  • 3,477