As we can see, the diagonals contain the variance of the random variables $X_1,…,X_n$ while the other entries contain the covariance between these random variables. Since the covariance matrix contains information about both the covariance as well as the variance, we sometimes call the matrix the covariance-variance matrix.

Extending to higher dimensions

To generalise this to more than two random variables:

$$\boldsymbol{\Sigma}=\mathrm{cov}(\boldsymbol{X})= \begin{pmatrix} \mathbb{V}(X_1)&\mathrm{cov}(X_1,X_2)&\dots&\mathrm{cov}(X_1,X_n)\\ \mathrm{cov}(X_2,X_1)&\mathbb{V}(X_2)&\dots&\mathrm{cov}(X_2,X_n)\\ \vdots&\vdots&\ddots&\vdots\\ \mathrm{cov}(X_n,X_1)&\mathrm{cov}(X_n,X_2)&\dots&\mathbb{V}(X_n)\\ \end{pmatrix}$$

To extend this concept to higher dimensions, we need to use some Linear Algebra. Let $X$ refer to random vectors, and subscripted $X_i$ is used to refer to random scalars.

Suppose we have the following random vector and vector mean:

$$\boldsymbol{X}=\begin{pmatrix} 1\\ \vdots\\ X_n\\ \end{pmatrix} \qquad \boldsymbol{\mu}=\begin{pmatrix} 1\\ \vdots\\ \mu_n\\ \end{pmatrix}$$

are random variables, each with finite variance, then the covariance matrix $\Sigma$ is the matrix whose $(i,j)$ entry is the covariance:

$$\Sigma_{ij}=\mathrm{cov}(X_i,X_j )=\mathbb{E}[(X_i-\mu_i )(X_j-\mu_j )]=\mathbb{E}(X_i X_j )-\mu_i\mu_j$$

Where $\mu_i=\mathbb{E}(X_i)$ and $\mu_j=\mathbb{E}(X_j)$. In matrix form, this translates to the following:

$$\Sigma=\mathrm{cov}(\boldsymbol{X})=\mathbb{E}\left(\boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{X}^T\right)-\boldsymbol{\mu}\boldsymbol{\mu}^T$$

NOTE

Trick when converting to matrix form

When we see $v_iv_j$, we can often rewrite this as $\mathbf{v}\mathbf{v}^T$.

Note that $\mathbf{X}\mathbf{X}^T$ is a matrix (i.e. recall that $\mathbf{a}\mathbf{b}^T$ results in a matrix), although $X$ is a vector here. An equivalent statement of the above would be:

$$\boldsymbol{\Sigma}=\mathrm{cov}(X)=\mathbb{E}[\mathbf{X}\mathbf{X}^T ]-\mathbb{E}(\mathbf{X})\mathbb{E}(\mathbf{X})^T$$

Published by Isshin Inada

Edited by 0 others

Did you find this page useful?

thumb_up

thumb_down

Comment

Citation

Ask a question or leave a feedback...

thumb_up

thumb_down

chat_bubble_outline

settings

Enjoy our search

Hit / to insta-search docs and recipes!