In math what does independent mean?

Answer 1

It means the independent number doesn't change unless it wants to or you want it to.

It doesn't respond to changes of anything else in any expression that it's part of. It's the

number that produces changes in others, not the one that responds to changes in others.

Answer 2

A set of variables or equations are said to be independent if no one of them can be expressed in terms of the others.

In statistics, a variable, X, is said to be independent of another variable, Y, if changes in Y do not cause changes in X. The reverse need not be true.