The paper presents a scheme of conducting ANOVA, which can be a statistical method using for the analysis of various complex phenomena in different fields of science. It is mainly focused on presentation of different areas of application at statistical model, especially in mineral engineering. Selected experiments in which ANOVA was used successfully to study the process of flotation and properties of three types of coal are presented in this study. Mineral resources are characterized by different properties and the flotation process depends on many factors which must be carefully controlled to obtain an expected separation efficiency of the process under industrial conditions. These facts determine the complexity of mineral processing structure. This choice of ANOVA was dictated by the adjustment of methodology to the nature of the analyzed phenomena. Based on this analysis it can be stated that the analysis of variance is appropriate to consider problems associated with the mineral engineering. The examples described in the paper confirmed a high potential which ANOVA carries. However, it should be noted that the one-dimensional analysis of variance has some limitations.