[Math] Is a dot product between two independent multivariate Gaussian random variables also Gaussian random variable

normal distributionprobability

Let $x, z \sim N(0,I_p)$ be two independent multivariate Gaussian random variables. The question is whether the dot product $x'z$ is a Gaussian distributed variable.

My guess is that it is not. However, I cannot find what is wrong with the following argument. Consider the joint distribution of $(x'z, z)$. We can write $p(x'z,z) = p(x'z|z)p(z)$. Since conditionally $x'z|z$ is a Gaussian and $z$ is Gaussian, the product of two Gaussian densities is a density of a multivariate Gaussian variable. Therefore $(x'z, z)$ are jointly Gaussian, which implies that marginally $x'z$ is also a Gaussian variable.

Best Answer

Elaborating on alex.jordan's answer. Consider the one-dimensional case, where $X$ and $Z$ are independent ${\rm N}(0,1)$ variables. Then, $$ p_{XZ,Z} (xz,z) = p_{XZ|Z} (xz|z)p_Z (z). $$ Now, conditionally on $Z=z$, $XZ$ is normally distributed with mean $0$ and variance ${\rm Var}(Xz)=z^2$. Hence, $$ p_{XZ|Z} (xz|z) = \frac{1}{{\sqrt {2\pi z^2 } }}\exp \bigg[ - \frac{{(xz)^2 }}{{2z^2 }}\bigg] = \frac{1}{{\sqrt {2\pi z^2 } }}e^{ - x^2 /2} , $$ and in turn, $$ p_{XZ,Z} (xz,z) = \frac{1}{{\sqrt {2\pi z^2 } }}e^{ - x^2 /2} \frac{1}{{\sqrt {2\pi } }}e^{ - z^2 /2} = \frac{1}{{2\pi |z|}}e^{ - (x^2 + z^2 )/2} , $$ which is not Gaussian because of the $|z|$ in the denominator.