Discriminant analysis

The procedure by which the number of significant discriminant functions are determined is much like the statistical procedure canonical correlation. The first discriminant function provides the best separation among groups. Then, a second discriminant function is found that is orthogonal to the first and does not contain any associations that were found in the first discriminant function. This procedure continues until all orthogonal discriminant functions are evaluated. To note, only the first one or two discriminant functions determined reliably discriminate among groups.