chemometrics

plural noun

che·mo·met·rics ˌkē-mō-ˈme-triks

also ˌke-

: the application of statistics to the field of chemical analysis

The system doesn't directly measure boiling points and other physical properties; rather, it used chemometrics to infer them from the process stream's chemical composition.—

Chemical & Engineering News

Word History

Etymology

chemo- + -metrics, probably after Swedish kemometri

Note: According to Desiré Massart, et al., Handbook of Chemometrics and Qualimetrics, Part A (Elsevier, 1997), p. 13, the word was introduced by the Swedish chemist Svante Wold in a paper published in 1972 ("Spline-funktioner–ett nytt verktyg i data-analysen," Kemisk tidskrift, vol. 3, 34-37): "This name was mentioned for the first time by Wold in a paper published in a Swedish journal on the application of splines to fit data. He christened his group 'Forskningsgruppen for [sic] Kemometri'…." Svante Wold himself has stated that he used the word in 1971 in a grant proposal to a Swedish funding body ("SwNSRC" – a Swedish equivalent of the U.S. National Science Resources Center?) (see "35 Years of Chemometrics," talk given by Wold at a meeting of the International Biometrics Society, British and Irish Region, York, England, March 31, 2006—illustrations from the talk were formerly on line at www.britishandirish.tibs.org/live/meetings/pre2007/wold.pdf).

First Known Use

1972, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler

The first known use of chemometrics was in 1972

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