“…With emphasis now shifting to the ability to model nonlinear information, several tech-niques have been adapted or created to deal with such information, including locally weighted regression (LWR), projection pursuit regression (PPR), alternating conditional expectations (ACE), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and neural networks (NN). PCR and PLS can also be used to describe nonlinear systems by either incorporating a larger number of latent variables than would be required for a linear system (12) or using the nonlinear or quadratic versions of the algorithms (13,14). Whatever the method origin, each of these techniques aims at describing the nonlinear relationship that exists between a given sample attribute (in analytical chemistry this is most often solute concentration) and its measured instrument responses.…”