Oavhängiga

Oavhängiga is a Swedish adjective that denotes something that is not dependent on something else, i.e., independent. In contemporary Swedish, the more common terms for this idea are oberoende or självständig, and oavhängiga is typically encountered as a historical or stylistic variant rather than in everyday or technical use.

Etymology and usage: The word is built from avhängiga, meaning dependent, with the negating prefix o-, producing a sense of non-dependence. In modern technical writing, oavhängiga appears infrequently and is often limited to older sources, literary contexts, or dialectal usage. When precision is important, writers generally prefer oberoende, mutual independence, or obestämt oberoende for variables and factors.

In science and statistics: When used, oavhängiga usually corresponds to the idea of independence. For example, oavhängiga variabler would be intended to describe variables whose joint distribution factors into the product of their marginals, as in P(X, Y) = P(X)P(Y). In practice, however, the standard Swedish terms are oberoende or oberoende variabler, and oavhängiga may be viewed as nonstandard or historical phrasing.

Examples:

- The researchers assumed oavhängiga observations to simplify the analysis.

- In older texts, discussions of oavhängiga faktorer appear alongside oberoende faktorer.

See also: oberoende, självständighet, statistik, variabler.