While linear correlation (aka Pearson correlation) is by far the most common type of dependence measure there are few arguably better ways to characterize\estimate the degree of dependence between variables. This is a fascinating topic I keep coming back to. There is so much for a typical geek to appreciate: non-linear dependencies, should we consider the noise in the data or rather just focus on the underlying process, should we consider the whole distribution or just few moments.
In this post number 6 on correlation and correlation structure I share another dependency measure called “distance correlation”. It has been around for a while now (2009, see references). I provide just the intuition, since the math has little to do with the way distance correlation is computed, but rather with the theoretical justification for its practical legitimacy.