10096 IUPAC Gold Book - loadings 10.1351/goldbook.10096 10096 current 1 Projection of a factor onto the variables. "Loadings" (plural) refers to a column in the loadings matrix that relates to a particular factor. "loading" (singular) is the particular contribution of a variable in the original space to the factor. The loadings on a factor reflect the relationships between the variables on that factor. In principal component analysis the loadings are also the cosine angles between the variables and a particular factor. In multivariate curve resolution the term "pure component spectrum" is interchangeable with the term "loading" and is therefore deprecated. The term, in spectroscopy, may be confused with the spectrum for a pure material. multivariate curve resolution https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10100 principal component analysis https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10106 score https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10112 PAC, 2016, 88, 407. 'Vocabulary of concepts and terms in chemometrics (IUPAC Recommendations 2016)' on page 420 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2015-0605) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10096/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10096/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10096/plain Citation: 'loadings' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.10096 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-04-18T19:06:19+00:00