English

Noun

covariate ‎(plural covariates)

1. (statistics) A variable that is possibly predictive of the outcome under study.
   • 2009 February 6, Christophe Fraser et al., “The Bacterial Species Challenge: Making Sense of Genetic and Ecological Diversity”, in Science, volume 323, number 5915, DOI:10.1126/science.1159388, pages 741-746:

     On the basis of these analogies, any inference of a population structure driven by selective sweeps would require good longitudinal data from natural bacterial populations, as well as observations of episodic crashes in diversity causally associated with genetic changes and not associated with changes in ecological covariates.

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Related terms

• covary
• covariance