Degrees of Freedom

Degrees of freedom is a statistical concept that gives researchers, including those studying communication, a sense of how strongly a sample reflects the population of interest. Although degrees of freedom assist in understanding sophisticated, inferential statistics, they can also have application to everyday life. The following example is inspired by Joseph G. Eisenhauer’s illustration of applying the concept of degrees of freedom in everyday life and could be considered a lived application of degrees of freedom:

Consider a student who has a single afternoon in which to accomplish multiple tasks. Assume that the student wants to allocate one hour to eat lunch; one hour to study for a late afternoon math class; one hour to work out; one hour to shower, dress, ...

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