INFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE APPLIED TO METHOD-COMPARISON - A COMPARATIVE-STUDY

The results obtained in the determination of mercury in solid wastes b y AAS using two preparation methods(1) are compared through statistica l parametric and non-parametric tests, linear regression and informati onal analysis of variance. The informational analysis of variance (IAN OVA) method is a distribution-free procedure valid under minimal assum ptions. It is not influenced by the range of the data and has very sat isfactory robustness properties. Applying this algorithm to compare th e effectiveness of the traditional water-bath digestion method with th e microwave digestion method discussed in ref. 1, it was possible to a ssess the proportional errors introduced by microwave digestion method concerning the analysis of mercury in waste samples.