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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

need to explain degrees of freedom to an 8 year old
Message posted by Carol on October 24, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I have a test on thursday and my professor wants us to explain degrees of freedom to an 8 year old?
Does anyone have any ideas or explainations that I could use?


READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: need to explain degrees of freedom to an 8 year old
Message posted by jg on October 25, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Try an explanation based on the idea that you need n independent equations to solve for n unknown quantities.


Re: need to explain degrees of freedom to an 8 year old
Message posted by JG on October 26, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

You can also explain that if you see one animal of a given species you can have a general idea how big these animals are, but that you have to see at least two animals to have any idea how they differ from each other.



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