In probability and statistics, decoupling is a reduction of a sample statistic to an average of the statistic evaluated on several independent sequences of the random variable.
This sum, conditioned on all but one of the independent sequences, becomes a sum of independent random variables.
Decoupling is used in the study of U statistics, where decoupling should not be confused with Hoeffding's decomposition, however.
[1] (Such "decoupling" is unrelated to the use of "couplings" in the study of stochastic processes.)
This probability-related article is a stub.