The Accumulation of Palaeomagnetic Results From Multicomponent Analyses

Summary. In palaeomagnetic studies the analysis of multicomponent magnetizations has evolved from the eye‐ball, orthogonal plot, and vector difference methods to the more elaborate computer‐based methods such as principle component analysis (PCA), linearity spectrum analysis (LSA), and the recent package called LINEFIND. the errors involved in estimating a particular direction in a multicomponent system from a single specimen are fundamental to PCA, LSA, and LINEFIND, yet these errors are not used in estimating an overall direction from a number of observations of a particular component (other than in some acceptance or rejection criterion). the distribution of errors relates very simply to a Fisher distribution, and so these errors may be included fairly naturally in the overall analysis. In the absence of a rigorous theory to cover all situations, we consider here approximate methods for the use of these errors in estimating overall directions and cones of confidence. Some examples are presented to demonstrate the application of these methods.