Scree Plot

A scree plot is a graph used in statistics to help determine the number of meaningful factors or components in a dataset. It plots the size of each component's importance (called eigenvalues) from largest to smallest. Typically, you look for a point where the line starts to level off — this "elbow" indicates the optimal number of factors to keep. By doing so, the scree plot helps simplify complex data, highlighting patterns without unnecessary details. It’s a visual guide to identify which components contribute the most to understanding the data’s structure.