Ptolemy's table of chords to the arc angle in degrees as is to 3, or more precisely, the ratio can be made as close as desired to ≈ by making "θ" small enough. Thus, for the arc of °, the chord length is slightly more than the arc angle in degrees. As the arc increases, the ratio of the chord to the arc decreases. When the arc reaches 60°, the chord length is exactly equal to the number of degrees in the arc, i.e. chord 60° = 60. For arcs of more than 60°, the chord is less than the arc, until an arc
Degrees of freedom (statistics) Gosset did not actually use the term 'degrees of freedom', he explained the concept in the course of developing what became known as Student's t-distribution. The term itself was popularized by English statistician and biologist Ronald Fisher, beginning with his 1922 work on chi squares. In equations, the typical symbol for degrees of freedom is "ν" (lowercase Greek letter nu). In text and tables, the abbreviation "d.f." is commonly used. R. A. Fisher used "n" to symbolize degrees of freedom but modern usage typically reserves "n" for sample size. Geometrically, the degrees of freedom can be interpreted as the dimension