Updated for newer tidyverse packages..
I would try gathering a correlation matrix.
# install.packages(c('tibble', 'dplyr', 'tidyr'))
library(tibble)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
d <- data.frame(x1=rnorm(10),
x2=rnorm(10),
x3=rnorm(10))
d2 <- d %>%
as.matrix %>%
cor %>%
as.data.frame %>%
rownames_to_column(var = 'var1') %>%
gather(var2, value, -var1)
var1 var2 value
1 x1 x1 1.00000000
2 x1 x2 -0.05936703
3 x1 x3 -0.37479619
4 x2 x1 -0.05936703
5 x2 x2 1.00000000
6 x2 x3 0.43716004
7 x3 x1 -0.37479619
8 x3 x2 0.43716004
9 x3 x3 1.00000000
# .5 is an arbitrary number
filter(d2, value > .5)
# remove duplicates
d2 %>%
mutate(var_order = paste(var1, var2) %>%
strsplit(split = ' ') %>%
map_chr( ~ sort(.x) %>%
paste(collapse = ' '))) %>%
mutate(cnt = 1) %>%
group_by(var_order) %>%
mutate(cumsum = cumsum(cnt)) %>%
filter(cumsum != 2) %>%
ungroup %>%
select(-var_order, -cnt, -cumsum)
var1 var2 value
1 x1 x1 1
2 x1 x2 -0.0594
3 x1 x3 -0.375
4 x2 x2 1
5 x2 x3 0.437
6 x3 x3 1