Bug 154163 - Change "Degrees freedom" to "Degrees of freedom"
Summary: Change "Degrees freedom" to "Degrees of freedom"
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: lowest trivial
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Calc-Function
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Reported: 2023-03-13 15:16 UTC by Tuomas Hietala
Modified: 2025-03-14 03:12 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

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Description Tuomas Hietala 2023-03-13 15:16:08 UTC
Description:
The string "Degrees freedom" can be found in several places in LO. AFAICT it refers to degrees of freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_freedom

"Degrees freedom" does not seem to be a common/correct way of writing it, so I suggest that it should be changed to "Degrees of freedom".

Steps to Reproduce:
1. See https://translations.documentfoundation.org/languages/en/libo_ui-master/search/?offset=1&q=%22degrees+freedom%22&sort_by=-priority%2Cposition&checksum=


Actual Results:
"Degrees freedom" is used.

Expected Results:
"Degrees of freedom" is used.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
n/a
Comment 1 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2023-03-13 17:59:17 UTC
You may be interested in this one, Seth
Comment 2 sdc.blanco 2023-03-13 20:51:22 UTC
Thanks for your query Tuomas. I agree with you that "degrees freedom" is not common in everyday communication, but in this case, the phrase is being used as a kind of "tip" to explain statistical functions in Calc.

To see it "in action" --

1. Open Calc document.
2. Insert Function (or Ctrl+F2)
3. Search TINV (or FINV, or F.D or F.I, etc.)
4. Select one of the functions (e.g., TINV).

Actual: See on right side of dialog window the function with "Degrees freedom".

The strings that appear in the right side (and that you found in your search) come from sc/inc/scfuncs.hrc  

In this context, I believe users understand/recognize, maybe even prefer "Degrees freedom".

You can read about these functions in 

https://help.libreoffice.org/7.6/en-US/text/scalc/01/04060182.html (for F*) 
https://help.libreoffice.org/7.6/en-US/text/scalc/01/04060185.html (for t-tests)

where @Adolfo, we can see another problem:  "DegreeFreedom" appears throughout. I assume it is not worth triggering retranslation just to add a space -- but I will leave that decision to others.

Summa summarum: NAB (imo)
Comment 3 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-03-13 21:26:35 UTC
(was about to say something very similar to Seth when our comments conflicted. Here's the updated version.)

Keeping it short in these function models is justified, but the use is inconsistent throughout.
- 23 times "Degrees freedom": https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/more/core/sc/inc/scfuncs.hrc?full=%22degrees+freedom%22
- 4 times "Degrees of Freedom": https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/more/core/sc/inc/scfuncs.hrc?full=%22degrees+of+freedom%22

The important thing is sticking to one form (and case) for all functions. The inconsistency is noticeable for example when going from function CHISQ.INV to CHISQ.INV.RT, which us two different forms.

Adding "of" is not a big cost space-wise, but there are lots more example of more drastic abbreviations (for example STDEV for standard deviation), so it doesn't shock me. I agree with Seth that we might not want to extend these. But I do think we need to fix the inconsistency.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2023-03-14 07:42:45 UTC
If you translate the German "Freiheitsgrade" literally it becomes "Freedom degrees". I never heard of such thing (nor the swapped), it's clearly "Degrees of freedom" in English. The common abbreviation is DF but I think we don't need to shorten this term.
Comment 5 QA Administrators 2025-03-14 03:12:54 UTC
Dear Tuomas Hietala,

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