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 Degrees of freedom In many scientific fields, the degrees of freedom of a system is the number of parameters of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for translation: its two coordinates; a non-infinitesimal object on the plane might have additional degrees of freedoms related to its orientation. In mathematics, this notion is formalized as the 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.