Analysis Of Variance: A Statistical Approach To Pattern Recognition And Motion Detection

The potential of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) as a pattern recognition tool is evaluated and two specific examples are presented. First, we present the 2-way ANOVA as employed in NASA's Project Oasis - the design of a signal detector for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In the Oasis design, ANOVA is capable of detecting non-random signals in an 8 million x 1000 matrix band of noisy signal data in quasi real-time. The presence of a signal with low signal-to-noise ratio is detected by the ANOVA by a rejection of the null hypothesis for certain row and/or column effects of compacted submatrices. In a somewhat analogous fashion, a 3-way ANOVA is used to detect camouflaged moving targets. Targets not differentiable from their background by the eye can be detected by the ANOVA.