Patent ID: 7248973

Claim:
A method of producing a metric to characterize a chemical array, said method comprising: quantifying effects of terms impacting results of measurement of an output generated from analysis of the array or a procedure performed using the array by performing ANOVA analysis and calculating sums of squares quantities attributable to each of the terms respectively; wherein said ANOVA analysis comprises modeling said terms as variables including nominal and/or ordinal variables as well as scalar variables relative to one or more measured outputs according to the equation: XB=Y where X is a matrix containing rows and columns of data representing the variables; Y is a vector or matrix with a column for every dependent variable of the measured outputs; and B is the solution matrix or vector containing a column for each response column in Y, that defines the effects of the variables in X; partitioning columns of X into q mutually exclusive and exhaustive bins of said columns; iteratively solving for values of the solution matrix of the model for each bin 1 to q for a pass through the entire X matrix; and repeating said iteratively solving for a number of passes until changes in calculated values of the solution matrix B become smaller in magnitude than a predetermined threshold magnitude, or until a preset maximum number of passes have been performed, as necessary to end a cycle convergence; generating a metric from at least two of said sum of squares quantities; and performing at least one of: outputting said metric and storing said metric in a computer storage device.