Timeline for What does it mean by "variance of the distribution is spherical"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
4 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 10, 2022 at 12:52 | comment | added | whuber♦ | Yes: this is techno-speak for assuming the attributes (modeled as random variables) are uncorrelated and share a common variance. That's all. When the joint distribution is Normal, isocontours of the density are indeed (hyper)spheres. That's relevant to k-means because it implies any cluster created through joint random variation around a single point would have a ball shape rather than a strongly ellipsoidal shape. | |
| Jun 10, 2022 at 10:48 | comment | added | Curious | Thanks for the reference @whuber. Is there a less mathy and more intuitive approach to understand the meaning of variance of distribution being spherical? | |
| Jun 8, 2022 at 16:30 | comment | added | whuber♦ | stats.stackexchange.com/… turns up explanations. The first I found is at stats.stackexchange.com/a/144896/919. | |
| Jun 8, 2022 at 15:55 | history | asked | Curious | CC BY-SA 4.0 |