Weak entity exists to solve the multi-valued attributes problem.
There are two types of multi-valued attributes. One is the simply many values for an objects such as a "hobby" as an attribute for a student. The student can have many different hobbies. If we leave the hobbies in the student entity set, "hobby" would not be unique any more. We create a separate entity set as hobby. Then we link the hobby and the student as we need. The hobby entity set is now an associative entity set. As to whether it is weak or not, we need to check whether each entity has enough unique identifiers to identify it. In many opinion, a hobby name can be enough to identify it.
The other type of multi-valued attribute problem does need a weak entity to fix it. Let's say an item entity set in a grocery inventory system. Is the item a category item or the actually item? It is an important question, because a customer can buy the same item at one time and at a certain amount, but he can also buy the same item at a different time with a different amount. Can you see it the same item but of different objects. The item now is a multi-valued attribute. We solve it by first separate the category item with the actual item. The two are now different entity sets. Category item has descriptive attributes of the item, just like the item you usually think of. Actual item can not have descriptive attributes any more because we can not have redundant problem. Actual item can only have date time and amount of the item. You can link them as you need. Now, let's talk about whether one is a weak entity of the other. The descriptive attributes are more than enough to identify each entity in the category item entity set. The actual item only has date time and amount. Even if we pull out all the attributes in a record, we still cannot identify the entity. Think about it is just time and amount. The actual item entity set is a weak entity set. We identify each entity in the set with the help of duplicate prime key from the category item entity set.