14.1 Introduction

This is an introduction to the widely used statistical tool, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Initially developed by Sir Ronald Fisher in the early 20th century, the term ANOVA is somewhat misleading as it primarily deals with investigating differences in means, not variances.

The chapter focuses on the simplest form of ANOVA, known as one-way ANOVA, applicable when dealing with multiple groups of observations to discern variations in an outcome variable.