As an example of what I mean, let's have a look at a simple sinusoid (though I see you're actually assuming double gamma functions; I may rework this later to use those). This models the signals as: $$ y_n(t) = \sin(\omega t + \phi_n) $$ so the only difference between them is the phase $\phi_n = (n-1)\pi/6$. The top plot is the mean signal $\bar{y}(t)$ and the bottom plot shows the Pearson coefficient between $\bar{y}$ and $y_n$ for $n=1\ldots 6$. [![enter image description here][1]][1] As you can see, the Pearson coefficient varies quite widely even in this simple example. --- **R Code Below** # 26438 Nsigs <- 6 T<- 1024 omega <- 2*pi*0.00982734982 t <- 0:(T-1) y <- matrix(,nrow = T, ncol = Nsigs) phi <- c(0, 1*pi/6, 2*pi/6, 3*pi/6, 4*pi/6, 5*pi/6 ) for (idx in 1:Nsigs) { #phi[idx] <- runif(1)*2*pi y[,idx] <- sin(omega*t + phi[idx]) } mean <- rowSums(y) / Nsigs total <- matrix(,nrow = T, ncol = Nsigs+1) total[,1] <- mean total[,2:(Nsigs+1)] = y pearson <- cor(total,use="complete.obs", method="pearson") par(mfrow=c(2,1),pty="m") plot(t,mean, type="l") title("Mean value") plot(1:6, pearson[1,2:7], pch=19, col="blue") title("Pearson coefficient") [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/OMS1j.png