Gaussian Bayes classifier Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For two multivariate normal densities, the Bayes log posterior odds are a quadratic polynomial. Equal covariance matrices cancel the quadratic term and give linear discriminant analysis; unequal covariance matrices give quadratic discriminant analysis.
Let be the multivariate normal density of . Under zero-one loss, the Bayes classifier chooses the class with the larger posterior probability. Thus
Equivalently, it chooses class one when the log posterior odds
is nonnegative. The decision boundary is .
If , the terms cancel, leaving
an affine function. This is the linear boundary of linear discriminant analysis. If , the quadratic part is
which is nonzero, so the boundary is a possibly degenerate quadratic hypersurface, as in quadratic discriminant analysis. This is the Gaussian Bayes classifier.