Discrimination between groups of chromosomes and individual chromosomes in the normal human karyotype

The karyotypes of 200 normal individuals are examined in a study designed to investigate the extent to which the cytologist's classification of chromosomes into the A–G autosomal groups and identification of individual chromosomes are reflected in the values of measurements made on these chromosomes. The statistical technique of discriminant function analysis is employed to obtain linear functions of the chromosomal measurements which may be used to classify and identify chromosomes. The results of the study indicate that while chromosomes can be grouped with a reasonably high probability of success using measurements alone, identification of individual chromosomes is somewhat more difficult.