DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS

Why DA?
• Researcher’s purpose is to classify objects

by a set of independent variables into two

or more exclusively categories.

 Example
• A manager might want to distinguish
between applicants as those to hire and not
to hire.
• The challenge is to find the discriminating
variables to be utilized in a predictive
equation that will produce better than
chance assignment of the individuals to the
groups.
 Purpose of DA
• The prediction of a categorical variable

(rather than a continuous interval-scaled

variable as in multiple regressions) is the

purpose of multiple discriminant analysis

 What to determine?
• In each of the above problems the

researcher must determine which variables

are associated with the probability of an

object falling into a particular group..

 Statistical significance
• In a statistical sense the problems of

studying the direction of group differences is

the problem of finding a linear combination

of independent variables, the discriminant

function that shows large differences as group

means.
• We will consider a two group discriminant
analysis problem where the dependent
variable Y is measured on a nominal scale
(n way discriminant analysis is possible)
• the problem is to find a linear combination
of the independent variables that shows
large differences in group means. The first
task is to estimate the coefficients of the
individuals discriminant scores.
• The following linear function is used
Zi =b1X1i +b2x2i +………+ bnXni
Where
• Xni = applicant’s value on the nth
independent variable
• bn= discriminant function for the nth
variable
• Zi = ith applicants discriminant score
• Using scores for all individuals in the
sample, a discriminate function is

determined based on the criterion that the

groups be maximally discriminated on the

set of independent variables.

• Returning to the example with three
independent variables,
• suppose the personnel manager
calculates the standardized weights in the
equation to be
• Z = b1X1 +b2X2+b3X3
= .069X1 + .013X2 +.0007X3
 So what is DA?
• Discriminant analysis is a statistical tool for

determining such linear combinations.

Deriving the coefficients of a linear function

is the task of a researcher

• This means that age (X1) is much more
important than the sales aptitude test
scores(X2) and mechanical ability (X3)
has relatively less discriminating power.
• The standardized discriminant coefficients
of weights provide information about the
relative importance of each of these
variables in discriminating between these
groups.
• An important goal of discriminant analysis
is to perform a classification function. The
object of classification in our example is to
predict which applicants will be successful
and which will be unsuccessful and to
group them accordingly
 Statistics associated with DA
• Cannonical Correlation
Measures the extent of association between
the discriminant scores and the groups.
Measure of association between single
discriminant function and set of dummy
variables that define group membership
• Centroid
Mean values for discriminant scores for a
particular group.

Discriminant function coefficients-

(unstandardized) are multipliers of the
variables when var are in original units of
measurement
• Eigen value- each discriminant function
has one. EV is the ratio of bet-grp to within
grp sum of squares

• Standardized dis fn coeff used as

multipliers when the var have been
standardized to a mean of 0 and variance
of 1
• Wilks Lambda for each predictor is the
ratio of within grp sum of squares to TSS
• Value varies bet 0 and 1.

• Large values close to 1 indicate grp

means are not significantly different.
• Close to 0 indicate grp means are
different.