How does Mendel’s law of independent assortment increase variation among offspring?

Mendel’s law of independent assortment increases genetic variation among offspring by ensuring that the inheritance of one trait is independent of the inheritance of others.12

This process occurs during meiosis, when homologous chromosome pairs separate. Because the maternal and paternal members of different chromosome pairs are assorted independently into gametes, the genes located on these different chromosomes are also shuffled independently.1

For an organism with $n$ pairs of chromosomes, this independent assortment can produce $2^n$ different combinations of chromosomes in the sex cells. In humans, for example, this mechanism alone is capable of producing $2^{23}$ (over 8 million) distinct types of gametes. When these diverse gametes combine during fertilization, the resulting offspring possess unique genetic combinations that differ from both their parents and their siblings, thereby driving the genetic variety observed within a population.12