A new easy-to-understand calibration method for the analysis of spectral da
ta is developed. The "parallel calibration" method is logically simple and
intuitive yet often provides an improvement over more complex standard cali
bration methods. A description of the algorithm with a technical justificat
ion for the parallel algorithm is presented, underscoring the simplicity of
the approach. In addition, performance as compared to that of the standard
methods of classical least-squares (CLS) and partial least-squares (PLS) r
egression is studied. Calibrations are carried out on a computer-generated
simulation data set as well as two scientific data sets, The results show t
hat the parallel method gives results comparable to or better than those of
CLS and PLS methods in terms of mean squared error.