Developing Human Capital: Using Analytics to Plan and Optimize Your Learning and Development Investments

Glossary^a

ANOVA

A statistical technique that helps in making an inference for whether three or more samples might come from populations having the same mean; specifically, whether the differences among the samples might be caused by chance variation. ANOVA (short for analysis of variance) is used in situations where a single factor is believed to account for differences in the data, and that factor allows us to lump the observations into a small number of discrete categories.

business metric

A continuous variable of interest in a data set. A business metric may be used as a dependent or an independent variable.

business outcome

The dependent variable you select in a statistical question. You select a single business outcome from the set of business metrics.

categorical variable

A variable whose values are a finite, restricted set of enumerated values. Examples might include gender (male or female) or job title (e.g., engineer, salesperson, manager).

coefficient of determination

See R-squared (R²).

cohort

A group of people who have a feature in common, particularly being of the same generation or entering a school or a company at the same time.

continuous variable

A variable whose values can vary across a broad range. Continuous variables may be either real numbers or integers, or they may fall into a restricted range (such as 0 to 100). Compare with categorical variable.

correlation

A mutual relationship of two or more things. The degree to which two or more attributes or ...