Unidimensional variability measure for multivariate random samples (or time series)

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I have multiple samples on $n$-dimensional random vectors (from a time-series). I'll like to have a unidimensional measure of its variability.

A natural one (discussed here) is to extend the variance for n-dimensional vectors $$ \mathbb{E}\left(\sum_{i=1}^n (X_i-\mathbb{E}(X_i))^2\right) = \sum_{i=1}^n \mathbb{V}(X_i)$$ however this measure can have scale-problems, for example, if the magnitude of the values in one dimension is considerably larger than the other dimensions.

Which measures are appropriate for this case?