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The expected values needed in the covariance formula are estimated using the sample mean, e.g. = = and the covariance matrix is estimated by the sample covariance matrix (,) , where the angular brackets denote sample averaging as before except that the Bessel's correction should be made to avoid bias.
A distinction must be made between (1) the covariance of two random variables, which is a population parameter that can be seen as a property of the joint probability distribution, and (2) the sample covariance, which in addition to serving as a descriptor of the sample, also serves as an estimated value of the population parameter.
The sample covariance matrix has in the denominator rather than due to a variant of Bessel's correction: In short, the sample covariance relies on the difference between each observation and the sample mean, but the sample mean is slightly correlated with each observation since it is defined in terms of all observations.
With any number of random variables in excess of 1, the variables can be stacked into a random vector whose i th element is the i th random variable. Then the variances and covariances can be placed in a covariance matrix, in which the (i, j) element is the covariance between the i th random variable and the j th one.
Pearson's correlation coefficient is the covariance of the two variables divided by the product of their standard deviations. The form of the definition involves a "product moment", that is, the mean (the first moment about the origin) of the product of the mean-adjusted random variables; hence the modifier product-moment in the name.
Simple cases, where observations are complete, can be dealt with by using the sample covariance matrix. The sample covariance matrix (SCM) is an unbiased and efficient estimator of the covariance matrix if the space of covariance matrices is viewed as an extrinsic convex cone in R p×p; however, measured using the intrinsic geometry of positive ...
The use of the term n − 1 is called Bessel's correction, and it is also used in sample covariance and the sample standard deviation (the square root of variance). The square root is a concave function and thus introduces negative bias (by Jensen's inequality ), which depends on the distribution, and thus the corrected sample standard ...
The same C(x, y) is called the autocovariance function in two instances: in time series (to denote exactly the same concept except that x and y refer to locations in time rather than in space), and in multivariate random fields (to refer to the covariance of a variable with itself, as opposed to the cross covariance between two different ...