The least informative distribution and correlation coefficient of measurement results

Abstract

Abstract Correlations play a significant role in data analysis and the evaluation and expression of the uncertainty, yet estimating them is often difficult. This paper provides examples of how to infer the measurand value, given only the uncertainties and correlation ranges of the measurement results. The least informative data-distribution is not Gaussian, but the marginal distributions are. Explicit results are given in the case of a data pair, where the inferred correlation coefficient is the midpoint of the given range.