The degree of freedom is the number of independent pieces of information or sample values required to perform any calculation. The degrees of freedom vary significantly depending on what is already known or what is required to be calculated. Consider the spots on seven dalmatians with a mean of 100 spots. Here, the first six counts can be freely assigned. Since the sum of the seven sample values is 700, the seventh sample value must be equal to 700 minus the sum of the first six counts, which is 100. Since the first six counts are independent, while the seventh count is dependent on other values, there are six degrees of freedom. Therefore, the number of degrees of freedom is the sample size minus one. The degrees of freedom are used to calculate standard deviation and statistical estimates such as the Student t-distribution and the Chi-Square distribution tests.