Pairwise independence
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In probability theory, a pairwise independent collection of random variables is a set of random variables any two of which are independent. Any collection of mutually independent random variables is pairwise independent, but some pairwise independent collections are not independent.
[edit] Example
Here is perhaps the simplest example. Suppose X, Y, and Z have the following joint probability distribution:
Then
- X and Y are independent, and
- X and Z are independent, and
- Y and Z are independent, but
- X, Y, and Z are not independent, since any of them is just the mod 2 sum of the other two, and so is completely determined by the other two. That is as far from independence as random variables can get.