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Generating random correlation matrices by the simple rejection method: why it does not work. (English) Zbl 1298.65077

Summary: We derive exact and asymptotic formulas for the probability that a symmetric \(n{\times}n\) matrix with unit diagonal and upper diagonal elements i.i.d. uniform on \((-1,1)\) is positive definite (and thus a “random correlation matrix”): this is almost never the case for \(n\geq 6\).

MSC:

65F30 Other matrix algorithms (MSC2010)
15B52 Random matrices (algebraic aspects)
65C60 Computational problems in statistics (MSC2010)
62H20 Measures of association (correlation, canonical correlation, etc.)
Full Text: DOI

References:

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