ANOVA stands for "Analysis of Variance", it is a statistical method that is used to compare the means of two or more groups.
For example, imagine that you are a researcher and you want to know if a new teaching method is effective in improving student test scores. You randomly assign students to either a control group or an experimental group, and then measure their test scores. You want to compare the mean test scores of the two groups to see if the new teaching method had an effect.
To do this, you would use ANOVA. ANOVA compares the means of the two groups and calculates a p-value, which tells you the probability that the observed difference in means is due to chance. If the p-value is low (usually less than 0.05), you can conclude that there is a statistically significant difference in means between the two groups, and thus that the new teaching method had an effect on test scores.
In simple terms, ANOVA is a statistical method that allows to compare means of two or more groups and determine whether there is a significant difference in the outcome among the groups.