However, if a third event is introduced, person A and person B live in the same neighborhood, the two events are now considered not conditionally independent. Traffic conditions and weather-related events that might delay person A, might delay person B as well. Given the third event and knowledge that person A was late, the probability that person B will be late does meaningfully change. Dice rolling Conditional independence depends on the nature of the third event. If you roll two dice, one may assume that the two dice behave independently of each other. Looking at the results of one dice will not tell you about the result of the second dice. (That is, the two dice are independent.) If, however, the 1st dice's result is a 3, and someone tells you about a third event - that the sum of the two results is even - then this extra unit of information restricts the options for the 2nd result to an odd number. In other words, two events can be independent, but NOT conditionally independent. Height and vocabulary Height and vocabulary are dependent since very small people tend to be children, known for their more basic vocabularies. But knowing that two people are 19 years old (i.e., conditional on age) there is no reason to think that one person's vocabulary is larger if we are told that they are taller. Conditional independence of random variables Two discrete random variables and are conditionally independent given a third discrete random variable if and only if they are independent in their conditional probability distribution given . That is, and are conditionally independent given if and only if, given any value of , the probability distribution of is the same for all values of and the probability distribution of is the same for all values of . Formally: where is the conditional cumulative distribution function of and given . Two events and are conditionally independent given a σ-algebra if where denotes the conditional expectation of the indicator function of the event , , given the sigma algebra . That is, Two random variables and are conditionally independent given a σ-algebra if the above equation holds for all in and in . Two random variables and are conditionally independent given a random variable if they are independent given σ(W): the σ-algebra generated by . This is commonly written: or This it read " is independent