A footnote on pCR for the geeks in the house

Yes, for those who have noticed, it is confusing that there are more than one PCR. Before this post, perhaps you only knew the COVID testing one. But, there was another one I was exposed to in my data science program. So just to keep them all straight, here is a list:

• pathological complete response (pCR) which is the breast cancer one;
• polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from COVID testing but is used more broadly than that; and
• principal component regression (PCR), which is a regression analysis technique that is based on principal component analysis (PCA).

Fortunately, it generally seems obvious in context which is the relevant one 🙂