 The total correlation is also the Kullback–Leibler divergence between the actual distribution formula_15 and its maximum entropy product approximation formula_4.Total correlation quantifies the amount of dependence among a group of variables.A near-zero total correlation indicates that the variables in the group are essentially statistically independent; they are completely unrelated, in the sense that knowing the value of one variable does not provide any clue as to the values of the other variables.