On 20/10/2008, at 5:26 PM, rlearner309 wrote:


I know, this is a forum about R. But I am so desperate of this problem (BTW, anyone knows any good Statistics/Math forum to post question like this?):

A and B are both n x n positive definite matrix.
Denote A > B, if A - B is positive definite.
I know this is true: if A > B, then A^{-1} < B^{-1}. But how to prove this? I tried to diagonalize A and B, but since they can have different eigen
structure,... I am stuck here.
Thanks a lot for any help here.



Your problem intrigued me; I tried to prove the result; couldn't; asked a clever mate; he couldn't; he asked some clever mates, who finally came up with the proof
that I have attached in pdf form.

(Anyone who's interested: If the attachment gets removed by the list, send me email
and I'll send the pdf file to you directly.)

        cheers,

                Rolf Turner

P. S.  ``WLU'' (in the pdf file) means Wilfrid Laurier University
(Waterloo, Ontario, Canada).



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Attachment: pos def.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

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