Assume \(x \sim N(0, \Sigma)\) is a multivariate normally distributed
random vector of dimension \(n\). We may want to consider the differenced
vector $$\tilde x = (x_1 - x_k, x_2 - x_k, \dots, x_n - x_k)',$$ excluding
the \(k\)th element (hence, \(\tilde x\) is of dimension
\((n - 1) \times 1\)). Formally, \(\tilde x = \Delta_k x\), where
\(\Delta_k\) is a difference operator that depends on the reference
row \(k\). More precise, \(\Delta_k\) is the identity matrix of dimension
\(n\) without row \(k\) and with \(-1\)s in column \(k\).
The difference operator \(\Delta_k\) can be computed via
delta(ref = k, dim = n)
.
Then, \(\tilde x \sim N(0, \tilde \Sigma)\), where
$$\tilde{\Sigma} = \Delta_k \Sigma \Delta_k'$$
is the differenced covariance matrix with respect to row \(k = 1,\dots,n\).
The differenced covariance matrix \(\tilde \Sigma\) can be computed via
diff_delta(Sigma, ref = k)
.
Since \(\Delta_k\) is a non-bijective mapping, \(\Sigma\) cannot be
uniquely restored from \(\tilde \Sigma\). However, it is possible to
compute a non-unique solution \(\Sigma_0\), such that
\(\Delta_k \Sigma_0 \Delta_k = \tilde \Sigma\). For such a non-unique
solution, we add a column and a row of zeros
at column and row number \(k\) to \(\tilde{\Sigma}\), respectively.
An "un-differenced" covariance matrix \(\Sigma_0\) can be computed via
undiff_delta(Sigma_diff, ref = k)
.
As a alternative to \(\Delta_k\), the function M()
returns a matrix for
taking differences such that the resulting vector is negative.