The problem in statistics of testing several variances
M. S. Bartlett · Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 1934
The test of significance of the difference between two means was extended by means of Fisher's methods of analysis of variance to test jointly the differences between several means, the test being essentially the same as the test of significance of two variances. But though it is true in many cases that we are chiefly concerned with two independent estimates of variance, and the method of analysis of variance is available, the problem of jointly testing the variances obtained from several independent samples does not fit obviously into this scheme.