书籍介绍:
As it is usually understood in France, and within the context of this book, the expression analyse des donnees re
ects a set of statistical methods whose main features are to be multidimensional and descriptive. The term multidimensional itself covers two aspects. First, it implies that observations (or, in other words, individuals) are described by several variables. In this introduction we restrict ourselves to the most common data, those in which a group of individuals is described by one set of variables. But, beyond the fact that we have many values from many variables for each observation, it is the desire to study them simultaneously that is characteristic of a multidimensional approach. Thus, we will use those methods each time the notion of prole is relevant when considering an individual, for example, the response prole of consumers, the biometric prole of plants, the nancial prole of businesses, and so forth.
From another point of view, the interest of considering values of individuals for a set of variables in a global manner lies in the fact that these variables are linked. Let us note that studying links between all the variables taken two-by-two does not constitute a multidimensional approach in the strict sense. This approach involves the simultaneous consideration of all the links between variables taken two-by-two. That is what is done, for example, when highlighting a synthetic variable: such a variable represents several others, which implies that it is linked to each of them, which is only possible if they are themselves linked two-by-two. The concept of synthetic variable is intrinsically multidimensional and is a powerful tool for the description of an
individuals variables table. In both respects, it is a key concept within the context of this book.
One last comment about the term analyse des donnees since it can have atleast two meanings|the one dened previously and another broader one that could be translated as "statistical investigation." This second meaning is from a user's standpoint; it is dened by an objective (to analyse data) and says nothing about the statistical methods to be used. This is what the English
term data analysis covers. The term data analysis, in the sense of a set of descriptive multidimensional methods, is more of a French statistical point of view. It was introduced in France in the 1960s by Jean-Paul Benzecri and the adoption of this term is probably related to the fact that these multivariate methods are at the heart of many "data analyses."