1. freedom from the influence or control of other individuals or groups.

2. complete lack of relationship between two or more events, sampling units, or variables, such that none is influenced by any other and that changes in one have no implication for changes in any other. For example, a standard assumption in analysis of variance, multiple regression, and many other statistical analyses is independence of observations, or the fact that the occurrence of one observation does not influence the occurrence of any others. See also statistical independence. —independent adj., n.