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NB: how to do for multivariate gaussians for INDEPENDENT components (ie diagonal covariance)?

User Roomsg
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Final answer:

Multivariate Gaussian distributions with independent components imply a diagonal covariance matrix, simplifying the probability density function and computational processes, as it involves individual univariate normal distributions for each component.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question pertains to handling multivariate Gaussian distributions with independent components, which is a topic in statistics, a branch ofa mathemtics. When you have a multivariate Gaussian with independent components, the covariance matrix is a diagonal matrix.

This is because independent components imply that there is no correlation between the variables, and hence the off-diagonal elements of the covariance matrix, which represent covariances, are zero.

The diagonal elements of the covariance matrix represent the variances of each component. With a diagonal covariance matrix, the formula for the probability density function (PDF) of a multivariate Gaussian distribution simplifies because the inverse of a diagonal matrix is simply another diagonal matrix whose diagonal elements are the reciprocals of the original matrix's diagonal elements, and the determinant of a diagonal matrix is the product of its diagonal elements.

To work with such a distribution, you would express the PDF of the multivariate Gaussian using the variances of the individual component

This facilitates easier computation and understanding of the multivariate Gaussian distributions with independent components.

User NobodysNightmare
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