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Independence is a fundamental notion in probability theory, as in statistics and the theory of stochastic processes.Two events are independent, statistically independent, or stochastically independent [1] if, informally speaking, the occurrence of one does not affect the probability of occurrence of the other or, equivalently, does not affect the odds.
In mathematics, a function is a rule for taking an input (in the simplest case, a number or set of numbers) [5] and providing an output (which may also be a number). [5] A symbol that stands for an arbitrary input is called an independent variable, while a symbol that stands for an arbitrary output is called a dependent variable. [6]
A chart showing a uniform distribution. In probability theory and statistics, a collection of random variables is independent and identically distributed (i.i.d., iid, or IID) if each random variable has the same probability distribution as the others and all are mutually independent. [1]
Conditional independence depends on the nature of the third event. If you roll two dice, one may assume that the two dice behave independently of each other. Looking at the results of one die will not tell you about the result of the second die. (That is, the two dice are independent.)
In probability theory, a pairwise independent collection of random variables is a set of random variables any two of which are independent. [1] Any collection of mutually independent random variables is pairwise independent, but some pairwise independent collections are not mutually independent.
Students of statistics and probability theory sometimes develop misconceptions about the normal distribution, ideas that may seem plausible but are mathematically untrue. For example, it is sometimes mistakenly thought that two linearly uncorrelated, normally distributed random variables must be statistically independent.
The probability distribution of the sum of two independent random variables is the convolution of each of their distributions. Probability distributions are not a vector space —they are not closed under linear combinations , as these do not preserve non-negativity or total integral 1—but they are closed under convex combination , thus ...
Further, two jointly normally distributed random variables are independent if they are uncorrelated, [4] although this does not hold for variables whose marginal distributions are normal and uncorrelated but whose joint distribution is not joint normal (see Normally distributed and uncorrelated does not imply independent).