“…[15][16][17] For dealing with the multicomponent mixture systems, the first step is usually the determination of the number of ranks, or absorptive chemical components (ACCs), factors, principal components (PCs), and independent components (ICs), etc., in the mixtures. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Compared with empirical methods 19,20,[27][28][29][30] and pseudo-statistical methods, 21,22,25,31,32 statistical methods are based on well-established statistical principles and are free from questionable assumptions. 23,[33][34][35] The median absolute deviation (MAD) 35 is employed as a simple non-parametric statistical evaluation criterion with excellent robustness, 26,36 and it therefore was used for determination of the number of ACCs/ICs in the AKICA algorithm proposed here.…”