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I have a random symmetric matrix $ A \in \mathbb{R}^{M \times M}$, and random vector $b \in \mathbb{R}^M$. I also have access to expressions for the mean and variance of each element of $A$ and $b$ (so $M^2 + M$ elements in total), as well as the covariance between any elements in either $A$ or $b$ (so $(M^2+M)^2$ possible pairs). Many elements in $A$ and $b$ are highly correlated to each other as they are functions of the same underlying random variables.

My question is: How can I use the above to find approximate statistics (particularly the variance of) the solution to the linear system $A x = b$, assuming that $A$ is non-singular? Obviously the solution is explicitly given by $x = A^{-1} b$, but it is unclear what kind of distribution over $x$ will be induced by a particular distribution of $A,b$ (and I do only have access to first and second order moments of $A,b$, unfortunately).

I found a two-page PDF describing the statistics of a quotient (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~hseltman/files/ratio.pdf) of two random variables. Here, taylor expansions were used to derive approximate statistics (mean and variance) of a quotient, given the mean/variance of the numerator and denominator. Is it possible to generalize this to matrix inversion/solutions of linear systems, perhaps using multivariate taylor expansions?

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    If you look at the situation for the case $M=1$ you will get a good sense of the limitations of what you are doing. Consider especially the possibility that the distribution of $A$ has positive density at $0$ (but zero probability there) and contemplate the lessons of https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/299722. – whuber Jul 16 '21 at 21:29
  • Thanks @whuber. My main reason for asking this is in order to place some sort of confidence interval around x, or failing that, to at least get an idea of the distribution it has. Given the amount of work on random matrices, it's somewhat surprising how little information exists on problems like this, i.e. solutions to random linear systems. There is certainly a lot of resources for dealing with the "b random, A constant" case – user3204752350982 Jul 27 '21 at 14:31

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