Saturday, 22 September 2012

pr.probability - What is the probability distribution function for the product of two correlated Gaussian random variable?

Arkadiusz gives the answer in the case of two independent Gaussians. A simple technique to reduce the correlated case to the uncorrelated is to diagonalize the system. The intuition which I use is that for two random variables, we need two "independent streams of randomness," which we then mix to get the right correlation structure.



Let XsimN(0,sigmax) and let ZsimN(0,1) be two independent normals. Define



Y=tfracrhosigmaysigmaxX+sqrt1rho2sigmayZ.



Check that mathbbEY2=sigma2y and mathbbEXY=rhosigmaxsigmay; this completely determines the bivariate Gaussian case you're interested in.



Now, XY=tfracrhosigmaysigmaxX2+sqrt1rho2sigmayXZ. The X2 part has a chi2-distribution, familiar to statistics students; the XZ part is comprised of two independent Gaussians, hence Arkadiusz's answer gives the distribution of that random variable.



Edit: As Robert Israel points out in the comments, I made a mistake in my final conclusion: the random variables X2 and XZ are uncorrelated, though certainly not independent. Nonetheless, the problem is essentially resolved at this point, since we have reduced the problem of understanding the product XY to a sum of uncorrelated random variables X2 and XZ with known distributions.

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