Two methods of orthogonally stepwise discrimination and their applications

In this paper, we describe two methods of discrimination based on MSE ratio and regression, respectively, and an algorithm of orthogonally stepwise discrimination. The method is not limited by the assumption that the sample covariance matrix is not ill-conditioned or singular, and by any assumption about the distribution of each population as well. So, it has wide range of application to various problems, particularly, to the problem of discrimination with both quantitative and qualitative variables. After variables are selected in the procedure of stepwise discrimination, they need not be rejected. Several examples have been calculated by using the method, and the results are quite satisfying.