Dependent and Independent Variables
Variables are further distinguished as being either a dependent variable or an independent variable. Independent variables are regarded as inputs to a system and may take on different values freely. Dependent variables are those values that change as a consequence of changes in other values in the system.
When one value is completely determined by another or several others, then it is called a function of the other value or values. In this case the value of the function is a dependent variable and the other values are independent variables. The notation f(x) is used for the value of the function f with x representing the independent variable. Similarly, notation such as f(x, y, z) may be used when there are several independent variables that are not the same.
Read more about this topic: Variable (mathematics)
Famous quotes containing the words dependent, independent and/or variables:
“Now wait a minute. You listen to me. I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex- wives, and several bartenders dependent on me. And I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The variables are surprisingly few.... One can whip or be whipped; one can eat excrement or quaff urine; mouth and private part can be meet in this or that commerce. After which there is the gray of morning and the sour knowledge that things have remained fairly generally the same since man first met goat and woman.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)