Analysis Of Variance, ANOVA

A test for data, such as listening test results, assesses whether the means of two or more groups are equal by comparing the variance between group means to the variance within groups. This is generally considered a basic method for most datasets. For example, imagine we have three microphones and five listeners. We hypothesize that all microphones sound the same. We then calculate the variance of the mean results for each microphone and examine the variance among listeners. The ratio of “between-groups” variance to “within-groups" variance is calculated. The higher this ratio, the more likely it is that the groups have different means, leading us to reject our hypothesis.