ANOVA

(abbreviation of "analysis of variance"). An ANOVA is a method for investigating differences between groups.

The purpose of an analysis of variance ("ANOVA") is to find out if a collection of groups differ from one another (for example, three groups of children in different kinds of classroom, or three different types of drug treatment). The ANOVA technique involves measuring the variance of the group means, and comparing that to the variance predicted if all groups were randomly sampled from the same population.