Talk:Scatter matrix

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[edit] Comment on proposal to merge with article on sample covariance

Here are some arguments in favour of keeping the topic scatter matrix independent of other topics:

1. I feel the scatter matrix is a more fundamental and more clearly defined statistic than sample covariance. With the former there is no ambiguity about the normalization. With the latter, you always have to ask whether it has been normalized by N or by N-1, or perhaps by some other number.

If someone looks in wikipedia to find out what is scatter matrix, this article gives a succinct definition and then links to applications, like sample covariance, covariance estimation and Wishart distribution.

2. The scatter matrix is used in other wikipedia articles (and could be used in still more), not just in the sample covariance article.

Entropeneur 07:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)