How would you go about explaining i.i.d (independent and identically distributed) to non-technical people?
It means "Independent and identically distributed".

A good example is a succession of throws of a fair coin: The coin has no memory, so all the throws are "independent".

And every throw is 50:50 (heads:tails), so the coin is and stays fair - the distribution from which every throw is drawn, so to speak, is and stays the same: "identically distributed".

A good starting point would be the Wikipedia page.

::EDIT::

Follow this link to further explore the concept.
