IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-1-4899-3184-9_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Factor analysis

In: Introduction to Multivariate Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Chatfield

    (Bath University, School of Mathematics)

  • Alexander J. Collins

    (Bath University, School of Mathematics)

Abstract

Factor analysis (abbreviated to FA) has somewhat similar aims to principal component analysis (PCA) in that it is a variable-directed technique which is appropriate when the variables arise ‘on an equal footing’. The idea is to derive new variables called factors which will hopefully give us a better understanding of the data. But whereas PCA produces an orthogonal transformation of the variables which depends on no underlying model, FA is based on a proper statistical model and is more concerned with explaining the covariance structure of the variables than with explaining the variances. Any variance which is unexplained by the common factors can be described by residual ‘error’ terms. Despite several basic differences, it is an unfortunate fact that FA and PCA are often confused by non-statisticians.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Chatfield & Alexander J. Collins, 1980. "Factor analysis," Springer Books, in: Introduction to Multivariate Analysis, chapter 0, pages 82-89, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4899-3184-9_5
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4899-3184-9_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4899-3184-9_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.