Multivariate Analysis

As the name indicates, multivariate analysis comprises a set of techniques dedicated to the analysis of data sets with more than one variable. Several of these techniques were developed recently in part because they require the computational capabilities of modern computers. Also, because most of them are recent, these techniques are not always unified in their presentation, and the choice of the proper technique for a given problem is often difficult. This article provides a (non-exhaustive) catalog in order to help decide when to use a given statistical technique for a given type of data or statistical question and gives a brief description of each technique. This paper is organized according to the number of data sets to analyze: one or two (or more). With two data sets we consider two cases: in the first case, one set of data plays the role of predictors (or independent) variables (IV’s) and the second set of data corresponds to measurements or dependent variables (DV’s); in the second case, the different sets of data correspond to different sets of DV’s.