ABSTRACT
Multivariate statistical analysis methods provide strategies that can be used to analyze complex data and to reduce the information content included in the data to the most important, statistically significant information that the data harbors. The objective of this entry is to review multivariate statistical methods available for parametric data, and to introduce the concept of perceptual mapping, which provides methods that can deal with multivariate nonparametric and mixed data in a similar manner as the methods known for parametric data.
