Re: HSC 2016 2U Marathon
Intuitively if two events A and B are independent, it means that knowledge about whether A happened doesn't affect the probability of B happening.
For example, say someone tosses a coin and rolls a die. Let A be the even the coin landed Heads and B be the event that the die landed 6.
If A and B are independent events, it means that if we know A happened (coin landed Heads), this gives us no further or less confidence in B having happened given A happened (6 being rolled too given a Heads). So if someone tossed the coin and rolled the die (without you observing them), and they told you that A occurred (Heads), it doesn't make it any more or less likely that B happened (that the die landed 6).
If A and B are dependent events though, intuitively it means that knowledge about whether A occurred alters the probability that B occurred given this knowledge.
For example, say two players Alice and Bob are playing a game of tennis. Say A is the event that Alice was sick on the day and B is the event that Alice wins.
Intuitively speaking, if we know A occurred (Alice was sick on the day), it affects the chance that B occurred given A (that Alice won the game given we know she was sick).