Extended generalised variances, with applications (Q2405118)

This is an interesting paper. A new measure \(\psi_k\) of dispersion is defined to be the mean squared volume of simplices of dimension \(k\) formed by \(k+1\) independent samples. Such a measure extends the generalized variance for a \(d\)-dimensional distribution. Several properties of the measure \(\psi_k\) are investigated, including its representation in terms of the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix of the distribution and a necessary and sufficient condition for optimality. Several applications of this new measure are also presented.