# Notes on Gaussian Process

My study notes on Gaussian Process and some useful resources. Useful Resources ------ - GP Toolbox in Matlab: [GPML](http://www.gaussianprocess.org/gpml/code/matlab/doc/). A GP theme website is [here](http://www.gaussianprocess.org/). - A good GP textbook: [Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning](http://www.gaussianprocess.org/gpml/chapters/RW.pdf). I. Introduction ====== Gaussian process (GP) is a non-parametric supervised machine learning method, which has been widely used to model nonlinear system dynamics as well. GP works to infer an unknown function $$y = f(x)$$ based on the training set $$\mathcal{D}:= \{(x_i, y_i): i=1,\cdots,n\}$$ with $$n$$ noisy observations. Comparing with other machine learning techniques, GP has the following main merits: - GP provides an estimate of uncertainty or confidence in the predictions through the predictive variance, in addition to using the predictive mean as the prediction. - GP can work well with small datasets. - In the nature of Bayesian learning, GP incorporates prior domain knowledge of the unknwon system by defining kernel covariance function or setting hyperparameters. Formally, a GP is defined as a collection of random variables, any Gaussian process finite number of which have a joint Gaussian distribution. A GP is fully specified by a mean function $$m(x)$$ and a (kernel) covariance function $$k(x,x')$$, which is denoted as \begin{align} f(x) & \sim\mathcal{GP}(m(x),k(x,x')) \\ g(y) & = \end{align}