analysis of variance

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A method for assessing the contribution of an independent variable or controllable factor to the observed variation in an experimentally observed dependent variable.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Statistics) a statistical technique by which the results of an observation or experiment are analyzed to determine the relative contributions of the different possible causative factors or variables to the outcome. Abbreviated ANOVA.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun statistics A collection of statistical models, and their associated procedures, in which the observed variance is partitioned into components due to different explanatory variables.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a statistical method for making simultaneous comparisons between two or more means; a statistical method that yields values that can be tested to determine whether a significant relation exists between variables