What do you expect?

Ulf's picture
Submitted by Ulf on Mon, 2007-05-21 15:42.

Imagine that you have a vector of length n. Each of the vectors components is a randomly chosen real number, normal-distributed with mean 0 and standard deviation 1 - N(0,1)-distributed.

What is the expected length of the vector?

I've done a complete derivation for n = 1, and for all even n >= 2. See attachment.

Warning: Not for the faint of heart!

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paper.a4.pdf29.97 KB