Examples of independent events

Example1: Queens & Hearts

If a card is randomly drawn from a standard 52-card deck, the probability of the card being a
queen is independent from the probability of the card being a heart.  If a randomly selected
card is a queen, that does not change the likelihood of it being a heart, diamond, club, or
spade or if a randomly selected card is a heart it does not change the probability of it being a
queen card.

Using a conditional probability to prove this:

P(Queen)=452=0.077

P(Queen/Heart)=1/13=0.077

Example2: Gender and Pass Rate

Data concerning two categorical variables can be displayed in a contingency table. 

Contingency Table of Gender and Pass

  Pass Did Not Pass Total
Men 6 9 15
Women 10 15 25
Total 16 24 40

If gender and passing are independent, then the probability of passing will not change if a
case's gender is known.

P(Pass)=16/40=0.4
P(Pass/Man)=6/15=0.4

In this sample, gender and passing are independent.