On Computing a Cholesky Decomposition

Maximum likelihood estimation of Cholesky decomposition is considered under normality assumption. It is shown that maximum liklihood estimation gives a Cholesky decomposition of the sample covariance matrix. The joint distribution of the maximum likelihood estimators is derived. The ussual algorithm for a Cholesky decomposition is shown to be equivalent to a maximumlikelihood estimation of a Cholesky root when the underlying distribution is a multivariate normal one.