Preface to the 2006 Edition

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. [Rick Blaine, Casablanca, 1942]

The purpose of this course is to give a short introduction to the basic techniques of chemometric data analysis and multivariate calibration. The course is aimed at science and engineering students interested in NIR (Near InfraRed) spectroscopy or in other areas where calibration methods are used. Prerequisites include some familiarity with elementary statistics and matrix algebra, but these topics are reviewed at the beginning of the course.

The main topic of the course is the set of multiple and multivariate regression techniques denoted by acronyms such as CLS, MLR, PCR and PLS.

The first version of the notes (2002) was based on the book by Bro (1996), but since the course is now taught in English, Bro's Danish text is no longer appropriate, although much inspiration from Bro's book remains.

The current version of the notes (2006) uses a notation that is slightly different from that of Bro (1996). We have tried to strike a compromise between the various notations in current use, such that readers familiar with the chemometrics literature should feel at home.

The material is organized in 11 modules. Each module has a main text section along with the following sections:

Examples: Contains examples, case studies and reference material not suited for the main text section.
Exercises: Contains exercises relevant for the current module.
Computing: Notes on the use of various chemometrics software.

We are grateful to Rasmus Bro, Carl Per Sørensen and Nawaf Abu-Khalaf for comments on the course material and for answering our many questions.

The quotations from Casablanca were taken from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Casablanca_(movie).

Odense, January 2006

Bent Jørgensen

Yuri Goegebeur

HOME | Back