Cameron-Martin theorem for a Gaussian measure Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
For with injective covariance operator of a Gaussian measure, its translated law is an equivalent probability measure to if and only if , the Cameron-Martin space of a Gaussian measure. For such ,
The series has mean-square convergence and converges almost surely under , with normal distribution . Its exponential density has expected value one by the moment-generating function of a normal distribution. Finite-dimensional projections give the formula by ratios of multivariate normal densities; convergence of these likelihood ratios gives the infinite-dimensional result. The expression is only formal when the sample is outside . For , translation gives mutually singular measures.
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.
Put , the precision matrix. The conditional independence graph has an edge between and exactly when and are not conditionally independent given all the remaining components. For the multivariate normal distribution,
Indeed, the conditional density of the pair given the others has its quadratic term determined by the corresponding two-by-two principal submatrix of ; its cross term vanishes exactly when , making the two conditional Gaussian variables independent. This is a Gaussian graphical model.
To derive the conditional law of one component, isolate in the multivariate normal density and complete the square. The terms involving it are
Therefore
Equivalently, its mean is and its variance is the Schur complement . These forms agree because the block of gives , and its block then identifies the variance. This proves the relevant conditional multivariate normal distribution formula.
In particular, the population regression of component on the other components has coefficients
intercept , and a Gaussian residual independent of the predictors with variance . These are the conditional regression coefficients from a Gaussian precision matrix. The coefficient is zero exactly when the corresponding edge is absent. Its counterpart has the same zero pattern and sign, but generally a different magnitude.
This motivates nodewise regression: for each , regress on , estimating an intercept as well. For sparse graph estimation, use the Nodewise Lasso criterion
The Lasso penalty encourages many fitted coefficients to be zero and remains usable when the number of predictors exceeds the sample size. Ordinary unpenalized sample regressions would usually give a dense estimated graph. Separate regressions can disagree about a pair, so an undirected graph can use the OR rule for nodewise graph selection, retaining an edge if either fitted direction is nonzero, or the more conservative AND rule for nodewise graph selection, retaining it only if both are nonzero. These are choices for combining estimated neighbourhoods, rather than identities forced by finite-sample fits.
The printed joint objective uses a Group Lasso penalty on the unordered pairs
This is paired group Lasso for Gaussian graph estimation. Each group represents a single undirected edge, coupling its two directional regressions. A sum of group norms encourages entire pairs to be zero; a squared group norm would give smooth ridge-type shrinkage instead of edge deletion. The constraint removes self-prediction, and the intercepts are not penalized.
The free symbols called in the objective are regression intercepts, not generally the marginal means of the original Gaussian vector. Profiling them out gives
and replaces all columns by their centred versions in the squared-error terms. This is profiling intercepts in nodewise regression. Scaling predictors to comparable units can also help interpret a common penalty, although the displayed objective itself is well defined on the given data.
The grouped KKT conditions make the sparsity mechanism precise. With centred residuals , define
The subdifferential of the Euclidean norm at zero is its closed unit ball, and away from zero is . Hence a minimizer satisfies
These are the paired group Lasso optimality conditions. They jointly threshold the two directional scores, matching the population fact that both directions represent the same edge.
Estimate the graph by including exactly when . This graph is undirected by construction. The penalty does not impose , nor does it mathematically require both coordinates of every selected pair to be nonzero. That distinction is appropriate because the population regression coefficients themselves need not have equal magnitudes. The fitted coefficient matrix is not automatically a symmetric positive definite precision matrix; its pair supports, rather than its entries as a precision estimate, supply the requested conditional independence graph.
Let , with three independent standard Brownian motions, and set and . The radial stochastic process is a three-dimensional Bessel process, which never hits zero by the Hitting-zero classification for a Bessel process. In three dimensions is a harmonic function away from zero: direct differentiation gives .
For the stopping times , , the Itô formula gives
The coefficients are bounded by , so each stopped Itô integral is a true martingale on every finite horizon. The stopping times form a localizing sequence; as permitted, its divergence need not be proved here. Thus is a nonnegative continuous local martingale.
To see that is not a true martingale, integrate the three-dimensional multivariate normal density of in spherical coordinates. The angular integral yields
where is the standard normal distribution function. Therefore the reciprocal of a three-dimensional Bessel process is a strict local martingale.
Let be the standard multivariate normal density. Independence gives the proposal distribution density
For an orthogonal matrix ,
The isotropic Gaussian density is unchanged by this transformation. Since has the same distribution as ,
Thus this is an orthogonal-mixture Metropolis proposal with a symmetric density; inversion invariance, rather than any assumption of a uniform distribution on orthogonal matrices, is what is needed.
With , the accepted off-diagonal transitions satisfy
The rejection part is supported on the diagonal and satisfies detailed balance automatically. Values of the acceptance rule at starting points where can be specified separately; they do not affect stationarity under . Therefore the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm kernel is reversible with invariant density , proving
The risk function of an estimator under the stated quadratic loss is
The multivariate normal density is proportional, as a function of , to
so maximum likelihood estimation gives . Writing with ,
for every .
Comparison with the multivariate normal density shows that is its precision matrix. Since the mean is zero,
Multiplying on the right by gives . Taking the transpose and using the symmetry of and gives . Hence the stationary covariance obeys the Continuous Lyapunov equation
The same equation follows directly by setting the time derivative of the second-moment equation from part (c) to zero.
Let have entries and let
Independent Gaussian measurement errors give the multivariate normal density
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.
Bayes theorem turns the categorical distribution prior probabilities and the component multivariate normal densities into
These probabilities define the label update in the Gibbs sampler.