Variance of a fitted regression mean ($\mathrm{Var}(v^T\hat{\beta })={\sigma }^2{v}^T(X^{T}X{)}^{-1}v$)

For a full-column-rank design matrix in a normal linear model, a fitted mean at covariate vector $v$ is $v^T\hat{\beta }$. The covariance matrix of the least-squares estimator immediately gives the displayed variance. Replacing ${\sigma }^2$ by the independent unbiased residual variance gives its squared standard error and a Student t confidence interval on $n-p$ statistical degrees of freedom. A future response instead contributes an additional error variance ${\sigma }^2$ when its error is independent of the fitted data.

// Target: probability-and-statistics.bigb