In our derivation of the various regression algorithms like Ordinary Least Squares or Ridge regression we defined the design/feature matrix \( \boldsymbol{X} \) as
$$ \boldsymbol{X}=\begin{bmatrix} x_{0,0} & x_{0,1} & x_{0,2}& \dots & \dots x_{0,p-1}\\ x_{1,0} & x_{1,1} & x_{1,2}& \dots & \dots x_{1,p-1}\\ x_{2,0} & x_{2,1} & x_{2,2}& \dots & \dots x_{2,p-1}\\ \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots \dots & \dots \\ x_{n-2,0} & x_{n-2,1} & x_{n-2,2}& \dots & \dots x_{n-2,p-1}\\ x_{n-1,0} & x_{n-1,1} & x_{n-1,2}& \dots & \dots x_{n-1,p-1}\\ \end{bmatrix}, $$with \( \boldsymbol{X}\in {\mathbb{R}}^{n\times p} \), with the predictors/features \( p \) refering to the column numbers and the entries \( n \) being the row elements. We can rewrite the design/feature matrix in terms of its column vectors as
$$ \boldsymbol{X}=\begin{bmatrix} \boldsymbol{x}_0 & \boldsymbol{x}_1 & \boldsymbol{x}_2 & \dots & \dots & \boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}\end{bmatrix}, $$with a given vector
$$ \boldsymbol{x}_i^T = \begin{bmatrix}x_{0,i} & x_{1,i} & x_{2,i}& \dots & \dots x_{n-1,i}\end{bmatrix}. $$With these definitions, we can now rewrite our \( 2\times 2 \) correlation/covariance matrix in terms of a moe general design/feature matrix \( \boldsymbol{X}\in {\mathbb{R}}^{n\times p} \). This leads to a \( p\times p \) covariance matrix for the vectors \( \boldsymbol{x}_i \) with \( i=0,1,\dots,p-1 \)
$$ \boldsymbol{C}[\boldsymbol{x}] = \begin{bmatrix} \mathrm{var}[\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_2] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{var}[\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_2] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{var}[\boldsymbol{x}_2] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots \\ \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots \\ \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{cov}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_{2}] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{var}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \end{bmatrix}, $$and the correlation matrix
$$ \boldsymbol{K}[\boldsymbol{x}] = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_2] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_0,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_0] & 1 & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_2] & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_1,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_1] & 1 & \dots & \dots & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_2,\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1}]\\ \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots \\ \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots & \dots \\ \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_0] & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_1] & \mathrm{corr}[\boldsymbol{x}_{p-1},\boldsymbol{x}_{2}] & \dots & \dots & 1\\ \end{bmatrix}, $$