Diversity, Dependence and Independence

Abstract: We introduce the concepts of dependence and independence in a very general framework. We use a concept of rank to study dependence and independence. By means of the rank we identify (total) dependence with inability to create more diversity, and (total) independence with the presence of maximum diversity. We show that our theory of dependence and independence covers a variety of dependence concepts, for example the seemingly unrelated concepts of linear dependence in algebra and dependence of variables in logic.