  Ropelength and embedding thickness are related measures of geometric
complexity of classical knots and links in Euclidean space. In their recent
work, Freedman and Krushkal posed a question regarding lower bounds for
embedding thickness of $n$-component links in terms of the Milnor linking
numbers. The main goal of the current paper is to provide such estimates and
thus generalizing the known linking number bound. In the process, we collect
several facts about finite type invariants and ropelength/crossing number of
knots. We give examples of families of knots, where such estimates behave
better than the well-known knot-genus estimate.
