Editing Degrees of freedom

{{Distinguish|List of freedom indices}}
{{Short description|Number of independent parameters of a system}}
In many scientific fields, the '''degrees of freedom''' of a system is the number of [[parameter]]s of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for [[translation (geometry)|translation]]: its two [[coordinates]]; a non-infinitesimal object on the plane might have additional degrees of freedoms related to its [[orientation (geometry)|orientation]].

In [[mathematics]], this notion is formalized as the [[dimension (mathematics and physics)|dimension]] of a [[manifold]] or an [[algebraic variety]]. When ''degrees of freedom'' is used instead of ''dimension'', this usually means that the manifold or variety that models the system is only implicitly defined.
See:
* [[Degrees of freedom (mechanics)]], number of independent motions that are allowed to the body or, in case of a [[Mechanism (engineering)|mechanism]] made of several bodies, number of possible independent relative motions between the pieces of the mechanism
* [[Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry)]], a term used in explaining dependence on parameters, or the dimensions of a phase space
* [[Degrees of freedom (statistics)]], the number of values in the final calculation of a statistic that are free to vary
* [[Degrees of freedom problem]], the problem of controlling motor movement given abundant degrees of freedom

==See also==
{{Wiktionary}}
* [[Six degrees of freedom]]

{{Dimension topics}}

[[Category:Dimension]]
[[Category:Broad-concept articles]]

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