1) The document proposes a new metric to predict the accuracy of source separation by independent component analysis (ICA) using finite sample data, as directly calculating independence from theoretical distributions is not possible with limited samples.
2) An experiment shows high correlation (0.97) between the proposed metric, which calculates the squared error between sample expectations of signal sources, and actual ICA separation accuracy, allowing prediction of ICA performance before application.
3) The metric improves on existing metrics like symmetric uncertainty coefficient that rely on approximating distributions from finite bins, and enables advance assessment of ICA feasibility for problems involving mixing of multiple signal sources observed through limited sensor data.