What are degrees of freedom?(RESEARCH NOTE)(Report) From: Social Work Research | Date: June 1, 2008| Author: Pandey, Shanta; Bright, Charlotte Lyn | COPYRIGHT 2008 National Association of Social Workers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

As we were teaching a multivariate statistics course for doctoral students, one of the students in the class asked, "What are degrees of freedom? I know it is not good to lose degrees of freedom, but what are they?" Other students in the class waited for a clear-cut response. As we tried to give a textbook answer, we were not satisfied and we did not get the sense that our students understood. We looked through our statistics books to determine whether we could find a more clear wa...