Classifying Data in Orange: What's the difference between 'Features', 'Target Variables', and 'Meta Attributes'
Meta variables are meta data, data about data, not used for statistical inference.
Features or variables or attributes are the measured inputs of the problem domain, the independent variables. The target variable is the dependent variable or the measure we're trying to model or forecast. Not all problems can be or need to be formulated in such a way. Orange was traditionally designed to accommodate machine learning workflows, hence the naming.