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I am interested in whether or not a "correlation" of three variables is something, and if what, what would this be?

Pearson product moment correlation coefficient

$$\frac{\mathrm{E}\left[(X-\mu_X)(Y-\mu_Y)\right]}{\sqrt{\mathrm{Var}(X)\mathrm{Var}(Y)}}$$

Now the question for 3 variables: Is

$$\frac{\mathrm{E}\left[(X-\mu_X)(Y-\mu_Y)(Z-\mu_Z)\right]} {\sqrt{\mathrm{Var}(X)\mathrm{Var}(Y)\mathrm{Var}(Z)}}$$

anything?

In R it seems like something interpretable:

a <- rnorm(100); b <- rnorm(100); 
c <- rnorm(100)

mean((a-mean(a)) * (b-mean(b)) * (c-mean(c))) / (sd(a) * sd(b) * sd(c)) [1] -0.3476942

We normally look at the correlation between 2 variables given a fixed third variable's value. Could someone clarify?

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  • In your bivariate Pearson formula, if "E" (mean in your code) implies division by n then st. deviations must also be based on n (not n-1). 2) Let all three variables be the same variable. In this case, we expect correlation to be 1 (as in bivariate case), but alas...
  • – ttnphns Aug 13 '13 at 10:03
  • For a trivariate normal distribution it's zero, regardless of what the correlations are. – Ray Koopman Aug 13 '13 at 18:51
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    @RayKoopman Agreed! According to Isserlis' theorem such a mixed-product moment of a multivariate Gaussian joint distribution will always have an expectation of zero when the number of variables is odd. – Galen Mar 19 '22 at 20:03
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    In Cosmology, three point correlation is defined see the answer here – patagonicus Sep 17 '22 at 05:28
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    Wikipedia seems to call this coskewness. – Rufflewind Sep 17 '22 at 08:41
  • There are many multiary functions that are in some sense a form of "correlation". See here for discussion and examples. – Galen Sep 20 '22 at 04:26