diff --git a/src/Distributions.jl b/src/Distributions.jl
index 673243af4..c6430dc1b 100644
--- a/src/Distributions.jl
+++ b/src/Distributions.jl
@@ -1055,8 +1055,9 @@ function rand!(d::MultivariateNormal, X::Matrix)
 end
 function logpdf{T <: Real}(d::MultivariateNormal, x::Vector{T})
   k = length(d.mean)
-  z = d.covchol.LR \ (x - d.mean)
-  return -0.5 * k * log(2.0pi) - sum(log(diag(d.covchol.LR))) - 0.5 * dot(z,z)
+  u = x - d.mean
+  z = d.covchol.LR \ u
+  return -0.5 * k * log(2.0pi) - sum(log(diag(d.covchol.LR))) - 0.5 * dot(u,z)
 end
 pdf{T <: Real}(d::MultivariateNormal, x::Vector{T}) = exp(logpdf(d, x))
 function cdf{T <: Real}(d::MultivariateNormal, x::Vector{T})