Hello,

I'm working on a project to try that tries to highlight bad performers. There are a lot of dimensions in the data set and I want to be fair in comparisons by making sure I am categorizing particular groups to compare against each other. For example, if you compared the speed of animals, you would compare dogs to dogs, snails to snails, etc.

What kind of tests can I run to see the significance/impact that a qualitative variable plays on a quantitative measure? That way I can group together these variables and make comparisons within particular groups.

I have experience in machine learning as a student but it's been a while. I have a lot of books to reference, just looking for some direction. I've done something like this before but just can't remember.