Discriminant analysis

Discriminant analysis is a form of statistical analysis that dates back to Fisher in 1936. It is a method for describing a one-dimensional function, that is, the difference between two or more groups, and allocating each observation to the group of origin. This is a classification problem where the groups are known a priori and one or more new observations are classified into one of the known groups based on the measured characteristics. Each observation must have a score on one or more quantitative predictor measures, and a score on a group measure. Discriminant analysis is useful in determining whether a set of variables is effective in predicting category membership.