A process involves collecting data relating to a particular condition and parsing
the data from an original set of variables into subsets. For each subset defined,
Mahalanobis distances are computed for known normal and abnormal values and the
square root of these Mahalanobis distances is computed. A multiple Mahalanobis
distance is calculated based upon the square root of Mahalanobis distances. Signal
to noise ratios are obtained for each run of an orthogonal array in order to identify
important subsets. This process has applications in identifying important variables
or combinations thereof from a large number of potential contributors to a condition.
The multidimensional system is robust and performs predictive data analysis well
even when there are incidences of multi-collinearity and variables with zero standard
deviations in reference group or unit space. Separate methods are provided: adjoint
matrix Gram-Schmidt's method for multi-collinearity problems, and modified Gram-Schmidt
method for the cases where there are variables with zero standard deviation to
achieve data analysis.