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Exact mean and covariance formulas after diagonal transformations of a multivariate normal

Abstract

Consider XN(0,Σ)\boldsymbol X \sim \mathcal{N}(\boldsymbol 0, \boldsymbol \Sigma) and Y=(f1(X1),f2(X2),,fd(Xd))\boldsymbol Y = (f_1(X_1), f_2(X_2),\dots, f_d(X_d)). We call this a diagonal transformation of a multivariate normal. In this paper we compute exactly the mean vector and covariance matrix of the random vector Y.\boldsymbol Y. This is done two different ways: One approach uses a series expansion for the function fif_i and the other a transform method. We compute several examples, show how the covariance entries can be estimated, and compare the theoretical results with numerical ones.

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