[Math] Are gaussian functions that have different kernel parameters orthogonal to each other

normal distributionorthogonality

If we have n gaussians where they have different scale and location parameters — are they orthogonal to each other?

By orthogonal I mean that the inner product is zero — like it is for two cosine functions that have a different phase.

So, by Gaussian I mean the normal function used for it's properties as a function and not as a source of Random variables.

Best Answer

This is not related at all. For example let $X_{i}$ be i.i.d Gaussian distributions of pdf $$ \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}{e^{-x^2/2}} $$ Then by definition we have $Cov(X_{i},X_{j})=0$ because $X_{i},X_{j}$ are independent. On the other hand if we have $$ X\sim N(0,1), X_{1}\sim aX+b, a,b\not=0 $$ Then we have $$ Cov(X,X_{1})=a^2\not=0 $$ Thus $X,X_{1}$ are correlated while $X_{1}\sim N(b,a)$.

Related Question