Degrees of Freedom
Definition
Degrees of freedom refers to the number of values in a calculation that are free to vary. In statistics, it represents the number of independent pieces of information available for estimating a parameter.
Analogy
Imagine you have a group project with your friends, and you need to decide on a theme for your presentation. If there are 5 people in the group, but only 4 ideas are needed, then you have 1 degree of freedom because one person's idea can be freely chosen or varied.
Related terms
Sample Size: The number of observations or data points collected in a sample.
Hypothesis Testing: A statistical method used to make decisions or draw conclusions about population parameters based on sample data.
Chi-Square Test: A statistical test used to determine if there is a significant association between two categorical variables.
"Degrees of Freedom" appears in:
Subjects (1)
Study guides (7)
AP Statistics - 7.3 Justifying a Claim About a Population Mean Based on a Confidence Interval
AP Statistics - 7.9 Carrying Out a Test for the Difference of Two Population Means
AP Statistics - 8.2 Setting Up a Chi Square Goodness of Fit Test
AP Statistics - 8.3 Carrying Out a Chi Square Goodness of Fit Test
AP Statistics - 9.2 Confidence Intervals for the Slope of a Regression Model
AP Statistics - 9.3 Justifying a Claim About the Slope of a Regression Model Based on a Confidence Interval
AP Statistics - 9.5 Carrying Out a Test for the Slope of a Regression Model
Additional resources (1)
Practice Questions (8)
- For a Chi-square test with 7 categories, how many degrees of freedom are there for this test?
- The degrees of freedom in a chi-square goodness of fit test is equal to:
- How do you calculate the degrees of freedom for a chi-square test?
- Which is the correct formula for calculating the degrees of freedom in a chi-square test?
- What are the degrees of freedom for the t-distribution when testing the slope of a regression model with only one parameter?
- What is the purpose of the degrees of freedom in a t-test for the slope of a regression model?
- When testing two parameters, what should be used as degrees of freedom?
- How do you calculate degrees of freedom for a two-sample t-test?
Resources
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