The content and format of the charts has evolved over time.
Multi-vari charts were first described by Leonard Seder in 1950,[1][2] though they were developed independently by multiple sources.
[3] As originally conceived, the multi-vari chart resembles a Shewhart individuals control chart with the following differences: The three panels are interpreted as follows:[4] More recently, the term "multi-vari chart" has been used to describe a visual way to display analysis of variance data (typically be expressed in tabular format).
[5] It consists of a series of panels which portray minimum, mean, and maximum responses for each treatment combination of interest rather than for periods of time.
Because it is a two-dimensional representation of multiple dimensions (one for each factor in the ANOVA), the multi-vari chart is only useful for comparing the variability among at most four factors.