In class we were discussing the geometry of -correlated, -dimensional Gaussians; call them , .
We have that . This is the sum of very well-behaved independent random variables with mean and variance , so its distribution value will be with very high probability. (To be more accurate, say with probability at least .) Hence will be with high probability. Since is also distributed as a standard -dimensional Gaussian, the same is true of .
Now imagine is fixed and we choose to be -correlated to . Then , where the random variables are independent standard normals. I.e., the dot product is plus an independent one-dimensional normal, . Since with high probability, the dot product is with high probability.
So the cosine of the angle between and will be , and hence the angle will be with high probability (assuming is treated as a constant in ).
Now this doesn't really yet prove that and are distributed like a random pair on the surface of the -radius sphere with angle . We just know that their angle will be and they will both be on the sphere. We should really look at the distribution of . But this is just a scaled -dimensional Gaussian, so its distribution is spherically symmetric. I guess this more or less justifies the overall claim.
Actually, I believe that will be close to orthogonal to with high probability. The dot product between the two will be distributed like , which will probably be on the order of . However the product of the lengths of the two vectors will be like . So the cosine of the angle between them will be like , and the angle will be close to degrees.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
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