Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2012 / iii / Paper 37 / 1 / b

The regression residual vector is $e=Y-X\hat{\beta }=(I-H)Y$, where $H=X(X^{T}X{)}^{-1}{X}^T$ is the hat matrix. Both $H$ and $I-H$ are symmetric idempotent matrices, and $(I-H)X=0$. Therefore $e=(I-H)\epsilon$ and the linear image of a multivariate normal vector givesThis multivariate normal distribution is singular, with rank $n-p$: fitted-residual orthogonality forces $X^{T}e=0$. Specifically, $\mathrm{Var}(e_i)={\sigma }^2(1-h_{ii})$ and $\mathrm{Cov}(e_i,e_j)=-{\sigma }^2{h}_{ij}$ for distinct observations. Thus regression residuals are generally neither independent nor identically distributed, even though the model errors are. Also $\mathrm{RSS}/{\sigma }^2\sim {\chi }_{n-p}^2$ and is independent of $\hat{\beta }$, which justifies the standard errors and exact Student t-tests below.