Combining estimates of tectonic plate rotations: an extension of Welch's method to spherical regression (Q1264511)

The paper covers the estimation of parameters in a very specified area of geophysics. The authors have developed better statistics for combining estimates of tectonic plate rotations. The new methods are an improvement over Welch's method of spherical regression. In case of heteroscedasticity, weighted linear regression has been utilized for small to moderate sample sizes. Conditions under which the spherical model converges to a linear model have been determined. A method of estimating the confidence regions is adequately provided. The paper includes a live example and simulation studies.