Prior knowledge of Confirmatory Factor Analysis required for Principal Component Analysis (PCA)?

[carton]

Can someone please tell me the prerequisites to learn PCA? Is prior knowledge of CFA needed? I am new to the topic. Thanks in advance!

 

[spunky]

Not really. If by PCA you mean Principal Component Analysis then it would be very useful for you to know some stuff about matrix algebra and properties of covariances matrices.

 

[noetsi]

PCA is more commonly stressed in exploratory factor analysis rather than confirmatory factor analysis. It does help to understand basic matrix notation to use it (although I am skeptical it really helps to understand what most people use stats for).