In statistics, the number of degrees of freedom is the number of values in the final calculation of a statistic that are free to vary.
Estimates of statistical parameters can be based upon different amounts of information or data. The number of independent pieces of information that go into the estimate of a parameter is called the degrees of freedom. In general, the degrees of freedom of an estimate of a parameter are equal to the number of independent scores that go into the estimate minus the number of parameters used as intermediate steps in the estimation of the parameter itself. For example, if the variance is to be estimated from a random sample of N independent scores, then the degrees of freedom is equal to the number of independent scores (N) minus the number of parameters estimated as intermediate steps (one, namely, the sample mean) and is therefore equal to N − 1.
Mathematically, degrees of freedom is the number of dimensions of the domain of a random vector, or essentially the number of "free" components (how many components need to be known before the vector is fully determined).
The term is most often used in the context of linear models (linear regression, analysis of variance), where certain random vectors are constrained to lie in linear subspaces, and the number of degrees of freedom is the dimension of the subspace. The degrees of freedom are also commonly associated with the squared lengths (or "sum of squares" of the coordinates) of such vectors, and the parameters of chi-squared and other distributions that arise in associated statistical testing problems.
While introductory textbooks may introduce degrees of freedom as distribution parameters or through hypothesis testing, it is the underlying geometry that defines degrees of freedom, and is critical to a proper understanding of the concept.
Although the basic concept of degrees of freedom was recognized as early as 1821 in the work of German astronomer and mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, its modern definition and usage was first elaborated by English statistician William Sealy Gosset in his 1908 Biometrika article "The Probable Error of a Mean", published under the pen name "Student".
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William Sealy Gosset (13 June 1876 – 16 October 1937) was an English statistician, chemist and brewer who served as Head Brewer of Guinness and Head Experimental Brewer of Guinness and was a pioneer of modern statistics. He pioneered small sample experimental design and analysis with an economic approach to the logic of uncertainty. Gosset published under the pen name Student and developed most famously Student's t-distribution – originally called Student's "z" – and "Student's test of statistical significance".
In statistics, linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables). The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression; for more than one, the process is called multiple linear regression. This term is distinct from multivariate linear regression, where multiple correlated dependent variables are predicted, rather than a single scalar variable.
In frequentist statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a range of estimates for an unknown parameter. A confidence interval is computed at a designated confidence level; the 95% confidence level is most common, but other levels, such as 90% or 99%, are sometimes used. The confidence level, degree of confidence or confidence coefficient represents the long-run proportion of CIs (at the given confidence level) that theoretically contain the true value of the parameter; this is tantamount to the nominal coverage probability.
We show that isogeometric Galerkin discretizations of eigenvalue problems related to the Laplace operator subject to any standard type of homogeneous boundary conditions have no outliers in certain optimal spline subspaces. Roughly speaking, these optimal ...
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2022
We present outlier-free isogeometric Galerkin discretizations of eigenvalue problems related to the biharmonic and the polyharmonic operator in the univariate setting. These are Galerkin discretizations in certain spline subspaces that provide accurate app ...
Lausanne2023
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Multi-component T2 relaxometry allows probing tissue microstructure by assessing compartment-specific T2 relaxation times and water fractions, including the myelin water fraction. Non-negative least squares (NNLS) with zero-order Tikhonov regularization is ...