TY - JOUR
AU1 - McFadden, P., L.
AU2 - McElhinny, M., W.
AB - Summary It is standard practice that a positive reversal test is claimed on the basis of inability to reject the hypothesis that two distributions share a common mean direction, and thus the claim of a positive reversal test is in fact often based on a lack of information. This is unsatisfactory. Therefore it is suggested that positive reversal tests should be classified according to the amount of information that was available for the test. This amount of information is readily indicated by the critical angle (e.g., at the 95 per cent confidence level) between the two sample mean directions at which the hypothesis of common mean direction for the distributions would be rejected. It is recommended that 5°, 10° and 20° be used as the breakpoints in the classification. database, palaeomagnetism, reversal test, stability tests, statistics References Cox A. Doell R. R. , 1960 . Review of paleomagnetism , Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. , 71 , 647 – 768 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Fisher R. A. , 1953 . Dispersion on a sphere , Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A , 217 , 295 – 305 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Fisher N. I. Lewis T. Willcox M. E. , 1981 . Tests of discordancy for samples from Fisher's distribution on the sphere , Appl. Stat. , 30 , 230 – 237 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat McElhinny M. W. Lock J. , 1990 . IAGA global palaeomagnetic database , Geophys, J. Int. , 101 , 763 – 766 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat McElhinny M. W. Lock J. , 1990 . The global palaeomagnetic database project , Phys. Earth planet. Inter. , in press. OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat McFadden P. L. , 1982 . Rejection of palaeomagnetic observations , Earth planet Sci. Lett. , 61 , 392 – 395 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat McFadden P. L. , 1990 . A new fold test for palaeomagnetic studies , Geophys. J. Int. , 103 , 163 – 169 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat McFadden P. L. Lowes F. J. , 1981 . The discrimination of mean directions drawn from Fisher distributions , Geophys. J. R. astr. Soc. , 67 , 19 – 33 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Van der Voo R. McElhinny M. W. , 1989 . The GP Compass , EOS, Trans. Am. geophys. Un. , 31 , 748 , 758 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Watson G. S. , 1956 . Analysis of dispersion on a sphere , Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., Geophys. Suppl. , 7 , 153 – 159 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Watson G. S. , 1983 . Large sample theory of the Langevin distributions , J. stat. Planning Inference , 8 , 245 – 256 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Watson G. S. , 1984 . The theory of concentrated Langevin distributions , J. Multivar. Anal. , 14 , 74 – 82 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat This content is only available as a PDF.
TI - Classification of the reversal test in palaeomagnetism
JF - Geophysical Journal International
DO - 10.1111/j.1365-246X.1990.tb05683.x
DA - 1990-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/classification-of-the-reversal-test-in-palaeomagnetism-3fwmznc6oW
SP - 725
EP - 729
VL - 103
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -