A best linear unbiased estimator minimizes covariance among linear estimators unbiased for the same target. In , assume , is a full-column-rank design matrix and the known covariance matrix is a positive-definite matrix. The best linear unbiased estimator of the coefficient vector is . A spatial trend estimate excludes the correlated residual prediction included in universal kriging.
Covariance and bias of a ridge regression estimator Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
For a fixed centered design matrix , independent errors of variance , and objective , put and . The ridge regression estimator has
Thus its standard error alone does not justify centering a confidence interval for at the biased estimator. A penalty chosen from the responses also changes its sampling distribution.
For a full-rank ordinary least squares design matrix, the hat matrix and residual projection satisfy . Hence fitted values and regression residuals are perpendicular as observed vectors. Under isotropic errors their cross-covariance matrix is zero, and under a normal linear model the two vectors are independent.
Let , , and . For design matrix columns of norm and , the event has probability at least when . Apply the sharp two-sided Gaussian tail bound to each standardized score and then the union bound; independence of the scores is not required.
Indicator variable 2026-09-29
An indicator variable of an event is one on and zero outside . Indicator columns encode categorical levels in a design matrix.