anova
|a-no-va|
🇺🇸
/əˈnoʊvə/
🇬🇧
/əˈnəʊvə/
compare group means
Etymology
'anova' originates from English, specifically the phrase 'analysis of variance', where 'analysis' ultimately comes from Greek 'analusis' (from 'ana-' + 'luein') meaning 'a breaking up' and 'variance' comes from Latin 'variare' meaning 'to change'.
'anova' changed from the full phrase 'analysis of variance' (used in statistical literature) and was later abbreviated to the initialism 'ANOVA' in 20th-century statistical practice; this abbreviation then became used as the common lowercased term 'anova'.
Initially, the component words related to 'breaking up' and 'change', but over time the combined phrase 'analysis of variance' came to denote a specific statistical method, and 'anova' has come to mean that method or its test result.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
a statistical technique (abbreviation of 'analysis of variance') used to compare the means of three or more groups by partitioning observed variance into components attributable to different sources (e.g., between-group and within-group variance).
The researchers performed an ANOVA to determine whether the mean scores differed across the four treatment groups.
Synonyms
Noun 2
the specific F-test result produced by an analysis of variance that assesses whether observed differences among group means are statistically significant.
The ANOVA yielded a significant F statistic (F(2,27) = 5.12, p < .01).
Synonyms
Last updated: 2025/08/19 15:37