Talk:Degrees of freedom

Untitled
In the ancient past, I failed a statistics class in which the professor blathered on about degrees of freedom as though I cared, but this page doesn't mention it. If I was supposed to have learned is one of the two meanings used in the article, the word statistics should probably be mentioned (with a link), otherwise the statistical meaning is necessary. Tuf-Kat
 * Thanks Tuf-Kat

I'm not going to mess with that half of it. :-)  EasilyAmused

My Stats teacher right now is having a terrible time explaining degrees of freedom, and I can't figure it out... this page is no help. Hopefully when I figure it out I can provide a better explanation. -Booya

The definition provided needs to be fixed. The common usage is applicable both to the engineering/statics and physics applications, which is that the number of degrees of freedom is the dimension of the system's configuration space, not the dimension of its phase space. More generally, it's the number of independent ways a system may vary, move or change (which, therefore, also subsumes the applications in statistics). A single atom has 3 degrees of freedom, not 6, while two atoms rigidly joined together collectively has 5. - Mark, 2006 August 22

According to Internic, degrees-freedom.com was only registered 5 days ago (2nd of Febuary 2007) Looks like marketing to me. Kaenneth 10:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2021 and 19 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ScaleneTriangle.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:14, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

numerics vs statistics?
Not sure if there is a difference between degrees of freedom (statistics) and degrees of freedom (numerics). Thoughts? --71.35.12.210 (talk) 05:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a Ph.D. in statistics and I've never heard of "numerics". What is the term supposed to mean? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Singular, not plural
The plural in the page title is incorrect. "Degree" here means "The amount that an entity possesses a certain property; relative intensity, extent" (degree). Analogous cases where the singular is already correctly used are: Degree of polymerization, Degree of curvature, Degree of inventiveness, Degree of unsolvability, Degree of relationship. Therefore I'd like to rename the currect dab page and its linked pages. fgnievinski (talk) 05:30, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree: the degrees of freedom of a mechanism are never considered individually, but collectively. In most cases only the number of degrees of freedom is relevant. For example, a point on the Earth surface has two degrees of freedom corresponding to the two independent directions in which it can move; but these two directions are not individually defined; one may choose any pair of independent directions. Note also that all pages linked in this dab page, written by people from very different areas, use also the plural in their titles. D.Lazard (talk) 09:15, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Degree" here acts as a measure word for freedom, which is a mass noun. It's like speaking of "head of cattle" instead of "cattle population". The plural form leads to convoluted expressions such as your "number of degrees of freedom" instead of more simply "(translational or rotational) freedom". fgnievinski (talk) 19:32, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You may be right from a grammatical point of view. However, here, "degree" can only take integer values, and, therefore is not an usual measure word. In any case, Wikipedia must follows the common usage, which is plural. D.Lazard (talk) 20:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Editing Plan
I plan to find sources for this article, and to try and simplify the language into a more general definition for degrees of freedom. I also plan to clearly link to the pages with more specific applications of degrees of freedom (currently at the bottom) and add more simple examples so that this article is more reader friendly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScaleneTriangle (talk • contribs) 15:28, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Deletion of this page
This page is ridiculous. Typing in degrees of freedom should just lead to a redirect. Adamopoulos (talk) 19:26, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with your first sentence. A redirect is not possible because of the number of pages titled "Degree of freedom (something)". A disambiguation page is not convenient, as these pages refer to instances of a unique concept (in the past, this page was a disambiguation page). So this page must be a WP:Broad-concept article. I have therefore restored the last version where the general concept is clearly described, and where it is explained why the subpages refer to instances of the same concept. D.Lazard (talk) 21:11, 27 December 2022 (UTC)