Linked Questions

2 votes
0 answers
2k views

Degrees of freedom in covariance calculation [duplicate]

When calculating the sample covariance, why do we divide by $n-1$ instead of $n-2$? Don't we lose two degrees of freedom since we need to calculate two sample means? For example, when estimating the ...
Harry Stuart's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
74 views

Sample Covariance [duplicate]

The sample covariance is defined as $\hat{\sigma}_{xy}:=\frac1{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^n (x_i -\bar{x})(y_i-\bar{y})$. What is the intuition for using the correction term $n-1$ instead of $n-2$. Because we ...
bachelor's user avatar
  • 363
1 vote
0 answers
64 views

Understanding "we lose degrees of freedom in product deviations"? [duplicate]

I'm having a tricky time understanding the statement: we lose $n−1$ [degrees of freedom] by computing the product deviations [in $cov(x,y)$] I'm not necessarily looking for an overview of ...
user101490's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
29 views

Why does computing product derivations eliminate degrees of freedom? [duplicate]

I'm trying to get an intuition as to why degrees of freedom is n - 1 when calculating sample covariance. This is what I found: 1) Start with 2n degrees of freedom from the bivariate data 2) Lose 2 ...
Trajanson's user avatar
  • 121
30 votes
10 answers
4k views

Sample two numbers from 1 to 10; maximize the expected product

Assume you sample two numbers, randomly drawn from 1 to 10; you could choose two strategies: 1) pick with replacement and 2) pick without replacement. Which strategy would you prefer to maximize the ...
user334639's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
12k views

Covariance of two sample means

I am trying to derive the covariance of two sample means and get confused at one point. Given is a sample of size $n$ with paired dependent observations $x_i$ and $y_i$ as realizations of RVs $X$ and $...
tomka's user avatar
  • 6,724
7 votes
2 answers
7k views

Variance and covariance in the context of deterministic variables

Questions: Can we talk about: variance of a deterministic variable?; covariance between a deterministic variable and a stochastic variable?; covariance between two deterministic variables? Are these ...
Richard Hardy's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

Why is Covariance Useful?

There are a number of topics related to covariance on this site. What I am having trouble grasping: why is covariance a useful thing to calculate? As far as I see it, covariance is not a helpful ...
ST21's user avatar
  • 185
7 votes
2 answers
9k views

Variance of the sum of random vectors

Let $X_1, X_2, \dots , X_n \sim G$ where $G$ is some distribution and the samples are not independent. If $X_i \in \mathbb{R}$, then I know that $$\text{Var}\left(\sum_{i=1}^{n} X_i \right) = n\text{...
Greenparker's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
7k views

Efficient way to compute distances between centroids from distance matrix

Let us have square symmetric matrix of squared euclidean distances $\bf D$ between $n$ points and vector lengthed $n$ indicating cluster or group membership ($k$ clusters) of the points; a cluster may ...
ttnphns's user avatar
  • 58.8k
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

When are OLS linear regression parameters inaccurate?

Q1: Show quantitatively that OLS regression can be applied inconsistently for linear parameters estimation. OLS in y returns a minimum error regression line for estimating y-values given a fixed x-...
Carl's user avatar
  • 13.3k
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

Standard Deviation is to variance as ____ is to covariance?

I'm looking at the bivariate relationships among a set of time-series data that have the same units. I have computed the covariance matrix and am working on interpreting it. My hunch is that it would ...
Neuromancer's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

formula for sample covariance: Bessel's correction

Two options for the sample covariance between X and Y: 1)(with Bessel's) COV(X,Y) = $1/(n-1)$ * $\Sigma$ $(Xi - mean(X))$*$(Yi - mean(Y))$ 2)(without) COV(X,Y) = $1/n$ * $\Sigma$ $(Xi - mean(X))$*$(...
user208557's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Uncorrected sample standard deviation in correlation coefficient

There seems to be a common use of the uncorrected sample standard deviation in calculating the correlation coefficient: https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/2728/Covariance-and-Correlation-in-MS-...
StatSmartWannaB's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

Dividing by degrees of freedom [duplicate]

When estimating parameters such as (I don't care about this specific instance particularly) Variance of a random variable X, one usually adopts Bessel's correction, i.e. using the formula $\hat{Var}{(...
mdc's user avatar
  • 141
1 vote
0 answers
939 views

Why absolute value of eigenvalues are used in PCA or LDA?

In PCA and LDA techniques, eigenvectors with the $k$ largest eigenvalues give principal components. However, when selecting these eigenvalues, are they to be sorted by the absolute value (regardless ...
Ananda's user avatar
  • 11
2 votes
1 answer
195 views

How is $\text{Cov}(\bar{Y}, Y_i - \bar{Y}) = \dfrac{1}{n^2} \text{Cov} \left( \sum_{j = 1}^n Y_j, nY_i - \sum_{j = 1}^n Y_j \right)$?

I have this example of sufficiency: Let $Y_1, \dots, Y_n$ be i.i.d. $N(\mu, \sigma^2)$. Note that $\sum_{i = 1}^n (y_i - \mu)^2 = \sum_{i = 1}^n (y_i - \bar{y})^2 + n(\bar{y} - \mu)^2$. Hence $$\...
The Pointer's user avatar
  • 2,204
2 votes
3 answers
132 views

Rationale for elliptical region of correlations in gene expression data

I am analysing an RNA seq data set and I am trying to look at correlation between expression values of significant genes in 4 different biological duplicates and their clinical parameters. Here, I ...
Juliette Leon's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
351 views

Law of total covariance with two conditioning variables

How to decompose the covariance with two conditioning random variables? For example, there is a law of total variance with two conditioning variables in the Wikipedia $$ \text{Var}(Y)=\text{E}[\text{...
den2042's user avatar
  • 353
2 votes
0 answers
324 views

how to find asymptotic joint distribution of two linear combination of order statistics?

Suppose I have n order statistics from some unknown continuous distribution funciton F(x), $X_{1}\leqslant X_{2}\leqslant...\leqslant X_{n}$. And I have two linear combination of these order ...
lzstat's user avatar
  • 290
3 votes
0 answers
286 views

Unbiased estimator variance of sample variance

I was reading the section on k-statistics on wolfram alpha. It was known to me that for the sample variance $k_2 = \frac{1}{n-1}\sum_{i=1}^n (x_i - \overline{x})^2$ it holds that its variance ...
Akkariz's user avatar
  • 71
2 votes
0 answers
242 views

Is the covariance between the product of two variables and one of the variables zero?

For two centered (zero expectation) random variables $X$ and $Z$ I am interested in the covariance of the product $XZ$ and either $X$ or $Z$. $$Cov(X,XZ) = E( X(XZ - E(XZ))) = E(X^2Z)$$ I think the ...
tomka's user avatar
  • 6,724
1 vote
0 answers
215 views

Distribution of the average of multivariate normals?

I have seen that the sum of $n$ iid multivariate normal vectors (mean $\mu$ and variance $\Sigma$), $X_1+\dots+X_n$, is distributed as a normal with mean $n\mu$ and variance $n\Sigma$. Is the ...
multi's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote
0 answers
52 views

The covariance of a data matrix

Please let me know if the below statement is valid or not ; Suppose that $X$ is an $n\times p$ data matrix with $p$ features and $n$ data samples. Suppose further that each feature(column) is zero ...
sj.kim's user avatar
  • 11
0 votes
0 answers
34 views

Calculate multivariate betas using correlations and standard deviations [duplicate]

In a simple regression context: $$ y = \alpha + \beta x + e $$ We can estimate beta from: $$ \hat{\beta} = \frac{cov(x,y)}{var(x)} = \rho_{xy} \frac{\sigma_y}{\sigma_x} $$ This last decomposition is ...
Tomas da Nobrega's user avatar