Multivariate statistics or
multivariate statistical analysis in
statistics describes a collection of procedures which involve
observation[?] and
analysis[?] of more than one
statistical variable[?] at a time.
There are many different models, each with its own type of analysis:
- Correlation analysis[?] simply tries to establish whether or not there are linear relationships among the variables.
- Regression analysis attempts to determine a linear formula that can describe how some variables respond to changes in others .
- Principal components analysis attempts to determine a smaller set of synthetic variables that could explain the original set.
- Discriminant Function or Canonical variate analysis[?] attempt to establish whether a set of variables can be used to distinguish between two or more groups.
- Principal coordinate analysis[?] attempts to determine a set of synthetic variables that best preserves the distance relationships between records.