We investigate the correlations of initially separable probability distributions in a globally pure bipartite system with two degrees of freedom for classical and quantum systems. A classical version of the quantum linear mutual information is introduced and the two quantities are compared for a system of oscillators coupled with both linear and non-linear interactions. The classical correlations help to understand how much of the quantum loss of purity are due to intrinsic quantum effects and how much is related to the probabilistic character of the initial states, a characteristic shared by both the classical and quantum pictures. Our examples show that, for initially localized Gaussian states, the classical statistical mutual linear entropy follows its quantum counterpart for short times. For non-Gaussian states the behavior of the classical and quantum measures of information are still qualitatively similar, although the fingerprints of the non-classical nature of the initial state can be observed in their different amplitudes of oscillation. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.33841732458470