
156 BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF MULTIPLE REGRESSION
Because regression, and therefore discriminate analysis, can have only
one dependent variable, it is only possible to use a dummy variable as
the dependent variable when you only have two possible categories, such
as repaying a loan (or not) or making a sale. These types of models are
often used by financial institutions where the dummy dependent vari-
able represents whether someone is a good credit risk. The purpose of
discriminate analysis is to assign each observation into one of the two
categories described by the dependent variable. In other words, we wish
to discriminate between ...