ECOLOGY COURSEWORK STATISTICS HELP!

[ShaanP]

Hi all,

I am currently working on the stats section of my coursework and all is great except for the explanation of my choice of "infinite degrees of freedom". The weird thing is I was told to do this instead of using the formula, but no one told me why i am using infinite degrees of freedom. My teacher wont even help!! If it helps, my project is comparing the Height/Length ratio of limpets on the upper shore and middle shore. I have 40 data points in one sample and 25 in the other sample. I would appreciate it is somebody can help explain this choice of "INFINITE DEGREES OF FREEDOM".

[pulle998]

That is really weird, basically degrees of freedom is the amount of independent comparisons that can be made in your data set. I have only heard of using infinite degrees of freedom in things like quantum mechanics. You are dealing with a finite data set, so that doesnt even make sense what your teacher is doing, all I could guess is that your teacher wants to eliminate the varience and effectively make it zero.