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The Riemannian median of positive-definite matrices

Functional Analysis 2026-02-17 v1

Abstract

We propose a definition of the Riemannian median M(A)M(\mathbb{A}) of a tuple of positive-definite matrices A:=(A1,,An)\mathbb{A}:=(A_{1}, \cdots, A_{n}). We will define it as a positive-definite matrix using Landers and Rogge's work \cite{Lan81} partially, not as a set unlike Yang's work \cite{Yan10}. Then, in the set of positive-definite matrices with the Riemannian trace metric, we show δ(M,Λ)1nk=1nδ(Ak,Λ)1nk=1nδ(Ak,Λ)2, \delta(M, \Lambda) \leq \frac{1}{n}\sum_{k=1}^{n}\delta(A_{k}, \Lambda) \leq \sqrt{\frac{1}{n} \sum_{k=1}^{n} \delta(A_{k}, \Lambda)^{2}}, where M=M(A)M=M(\mathbb{A}), Λ\Lambda is the Karcher mean of A\mathbb{A}, and δ\delta is the Riemannian distance induced by the Riemannian trace metric. This inequality is an analogue of μmσ|\mu-m| \leq \sigma, where μ\mu, mm and σ\sigma are the mean, the median and the standard deviation of real-valued data points. Moreover, we investigate the commutative case, how outliers have an effect on the Riemannian median, the congruence invariance, the joint homogeneity, the self-duality and the monotonicity in a special case, and construct a counter example showing that the monotonicity of the Riemannian median does not hold in general.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.14007,
  title  = {The Riemannian median of positive-definite matrices},
  author = {Yutaro Nakagawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.14007},
  year   = {2026}
}

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18 pages