pls-description.md

Combining aspects of PCA (principal component analysis) and linear regression, the PLS regression algorithm extracts a set of latent components that explain as much covariance as possible between the predictor and response variables, and then performs a regression that predicts response values using the extracted components.

This technique is particularly useful when the number of predictor variables is greater than the number of observations or the predictor variables are highly collinear. If either of these conditions is true of the input relation, ordinary linear regression fails to converge to an accurate model.