Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Errata and Additional Comments

Markus Svensén and Christopher M. Bishop

September 21, 2011

2
Preface
This document lists corrections and clarifications for the third printing1 of Pattern
Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher M. Bishop, first published by
Springer in 2006. It is intended to be complete, in that it includes also trivial ty-
pographical errors and provides clarifications that some readers may find helpful.
However, it is not assumed to include all mistakes that exist in the book and the
author welcomes reports of any remaining potential mistakes, along with any other
feedback on the book, which should be sent to
[email protected]
Corrections and clarifications are given in the order they should appear in the
book. Each entry starts with a page number in the margin, followed (in the main
body of the page) by the location of the mistake or ambiguity and the required am-
mendment. In specifying the location, the following conventions are used:

• Paragraphs are numbered from 1 on each page. The first paragraph is usually
the one continuing from the previous page, but if the first line on a page starts
a new paragraph, this will be the first paragraph. In the book, the first line
of each paragraph is indented, with the exception of paragraphs that follow
immediately after a chapter or a section (but not a sub-section) heading, which
are not indented.

• Line and paragraph numbers preceded by a minus (–) sign are counted from the
bottom of the paragraph or page. ‘Paragraph –1’ referes to the last paragraph
started, but not necessarily completed on a page.

1
To identify which printing your copy of the book is from, consult the page with bibliographic
information (immediately preceding the dedication page); if the one but last line reads “9 8 7 6 5 4
3 2 1” you have a copy from the first printing, if it reads “9 8 7 6 5 (corrected printing 2007)” you
have a copy from the second printing, if it reads “9 8 (corrected at 8th printing 2009)” you have a
copy from the third printing.

3
4 PREFACE

• The following abbreviations are used in this document: PRML (Pattern Recog-
nition and Machine Learning), l.h.s. (left hand side) and r.h.s. (right hand side).

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all of the readers who have reported mistakes in PRML.
In particular, we are grateful to the Japanese translation team, Dr Xiaobo Jin of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also to Makoto Otsuka of Okinawa Institute of
Science and Technology, Japan, and his colleagues in Neural Computation Unit, for
particularly thorough feedback.
 Corrections for pages 49–329 5

Corrections
Page 49 Second paragraph, line –2: Both occurrences of ln should be replaced by log2 .
Page 57 Line –4: I(x, y) should be I[x, y].
Page 90 Equation (2.96): x should be xa on the r.h.s.
Page 101 First line after Equation (2.154): a = 1 + β/2 should read a = (1 + β)/2
Page 192 Equations (4.47), (4.48) and (4.50): sW and sB should be SW and SB , respectively.
Page 192 Equation (4.51): This equation should read:

J(W) = Tr (WT SW W)−1 (WT SB W) .



Page 192 Second paragraph, line –3: J(w) should be J(W).

Page 193 Biography of Frank Rosenblatt: Frank Rosenblatt died in 1971.
Page 222 Exercise 4.16, line 4: t should be tn .
Page 238 Equation (5.37): “for all v” should be “for all v 6= 0”.
Page 239 Figure 5.6, last line of the caption: “’eigenvectors” should be “eigenvalues”.
Page 239 First line after Equation (5.39): “’strictly” should be inserted before the second “pos-
itive”.
Page 241 Second paragraph, line 2: “To see, this” should be “To see this,”.
Page 257 Section 5.5.1, line 1: An “it” should be inserted before the last “is”.
Page 267 First paragraph: Both occurrences of O(ξ) should be replaced by O(ξ 2 ) . On the
first line following Equation (5.133), “to leading order in ξ” should be replaced by
“to order ξ 2 ”
Page 268 Line 1: Insert “a” before “whole”.
Page 270–272 Section 5.5.7, from Equation (5.139) onwards: With the introduction of the σj2 s, the
regularization coefficient becomes irrelevant and hence it can be dropped from text
and equations.
Page 273 Equation (5.148): I should multiply σk2 (x) on the r.h.s.
Page 275 Equation (5.153): I should multiply σk2 (xn , w) on the r.h.s.
Page 295 Second paragraph, Line –2: The period (‘.’) should be moved up to the previous line.
Page 329 Second paragraph, Line –2: “bounded below” should be “bounded above”.
6 Corrections for pages 347–626

Page 347 Second paragraph: In the one but last sentence, following φi (xn ), insert “for i =
1, . . . , N and ΦnM = 1 for n = 1, . . . , N ” before the comma. The last sentence
should be omitted.
Page 405–406 Last paragraph on 405 upto and including Equation (8.69): Xml should be replaced
by Xlm throughout (text, equations and Figure 8.48).
Page 413 Equation (8.93): fs should be f under the summation operator on the r.h.s.
Page 414 Last unnumbered equation before Equation (8.99) as well as Equation (8.101):
µxn−1 →fn−1,n (xn ) should be µxn−1 →fn−1,n (xn−1 ) on the r.h.s.

Page 434 Equation (9.15): σj should be σjD in the denominator on the r.h.s.
Page 435 Third paragraph, line 3: “will play” and “discuss” should be “played” and “dis-
cussed’, respectively.’
Page 440 Second paragraph, line 4: Insert “log” before “likelihood”.
Page 453 Line 6: “convex” should be “concave”.
Page 512 Equations (10.217) and (10.218): On the left hand sides, m and v should be mnew
and v new , respectively.
Page 513 First line after Equation (10.224): An “of” should be inserted after “Examples”.
Page 534 First line: f (z) should be ommitted.
Page 536 Last line of Equation (11.27): zl should be z(l) .
Page 556 Exercise 11.7: The roles of y and z in the text of the exercise should be swapped in
order to be consistent with the notation used in Section 11.1.2, including Equation
(11.16).
Page 581 Last line: The fragment “introduced by’ should be ommitted’.
Page 607 Equation (13.1): The r.h.s. should read
N
Y
p(x1 ) p(xn |x1 , . . . , xn−1 ).
n=2

Page 616 Equation (13.16): The the rightmost expression should read
X
ξ(zn−1 , zn )zn−1,j znk .
zn−1 ,zn

Page 624 Third paragraph, line –2: “seen” should be “occur”.

Page 626 Equation (13.51): f should be replaced by z to the right of the arrow in the (sub-
script) message indices on both sides.
 Corrections for pages 639–691 7

Page 639 Last paragraph: All instances of CAzn−1 should be replaced by CAµn−1 .
Page 643 Equation (13.116): This equation should read:
N
1 Xn
Σnew = xn xT
n −C
new
E [zn ] xT
n
N n=1
  new T  new T o
−xn E zT new T

n (C ) + C E zn zn (C ) .

Page 645 Paragraph –2, line –3: p(zn |xn ) should be p(zn |Xn ).
Page 666 Equation (14.32): Insert a minus sign(‘−’) before the summation on the r.h.s. and
remove the word “negative” from the preceding line.
Page 666 First sentence after Equation (14.33): This sentence should read: “These both vanish
if pτ k = 1 for any one k = 1, . . . , K (in which case pτ j = 0 for all j 6= k) and have
their maxima at pτ k = 1/K for all k = 1, . . . , K .”
Page 678 Paragraph 1, Line 4: “ideas” should be “idea”.
Page 690 Equation (B.58): K should replace M as the upper limit of the sum on the r.h.s. and
the equation should end in a period.
Page 691 First line: The sentence fragment starting the page is irrelevant and should be om-
mitted.