Book Image

Minitab Cookbook

By : Isaac A Newton
Book Image

Minitab Cookbook

By: Isaac A Newton

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Minitab Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Finding the principal components of a set of data


With Principal Components Analysis (PCA), we can try to explain the variance-covariance structure of a set of variables. We will use PCA to investigate linear associations between a large number of variables; or rather, we will change the dimensionality of a large dataset to a reduced number of variables. This can help identify the relationships in a dataset that are not immediately apparent.

As such, PCA can be a useful exploratory tool in data analysis and can often lead to more in-depth analysis.

This example looks at the tax revenue in the UK from April 2008 to June 2013.

How to do it…

The following steps will generate the principal components of the input factors and also plots to evaluate the impact of the first two principal components:

  1. Open the Tax Revenue.MTW worksheet.

  2. Go to the Stat menu, click on Multivariate, and select Principal Components...

  3. For the Variables: section, select the numeric columns from PAYE Income to Customs duty.

  4. In...