Use this field to specify one or more
BY variables
from the input data set to use in your analysis. Separate analyses are conducted for distinct levels of
BY group
variables. Separate plots are generated for each BY group.
BY variables are optional (in most processes)
variable
specifications whose values define groups of
observations
, such as hour, month, or year. BY variables can enable analyses to be performed separately on different groups as defined by that variable. Choosing a BY variable such as gender, for example, groups the subjects by gender and conducts two separate analyses: one for males and one for females.
For Row-by-Row Modeling processes like
ANOVA
, BY variables distinguish groups of data to which separate
models
are fit. For example, specifying a gene ID as the BY Variable in
ANOVA
fits an ANOVA model separately to each gene. If no BY variable is specified for these processes, a separate model is fit to data from each row.