Helix angle the helix angle. The efficiency can be plotted versus the helix angle for a constant friction, as shown in the adjacent diagram. The maximum efficiency is a helix angle between 40 and 45 degrees, however a reasonable efficiency is achieved above 15°. Due to difficulties in forming the thread, helix angle greater than 30° are rarely used. Moreover, above 30° the friction angle becomes smaller than the helix angle and the nut is no longer self-locking and the mechanical advantage disappears. In helical and worm gears, the helix angle denotes the standard pitch circle unless otherwise specified. Application of the
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