Degrees of Freedom
df


The degrees of freedom of an estimate is the number of independent pieces of information that go into the estimate. In general, the degrees of freedom for an estimate is equal to the number of values minus the number of parameters estimated en route to the estimate in question. For example, to estimate the population variance, one must first estimate the population mean. Therefore, if the estimate of variance is based on N observations, there are N - 1 degrees of freedom.