degrees of freedom (df)

degrees of freedom (df)

Degrees of freedom (df) is the number of independent pieces of information that went into calculating the estimate. We find it’s helpful to think about degrees of freedom as a budget. The more data (represented by n) you have, the more degrees of freedom you have. Whenever you estimate a parameter, you spend (or lose) a degree of freedom because a parameter will limit the freedom of those data points.  

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