Some notes on the fisher–bingham family on the sphere

The fisher–Bingham family is potentially useful class of spherical distributions, but its practical application has been hindered by various problems, including; the identification of the form of the distribution, given the parameter values; and finding an effective technique for calculating the normalising constant, a requirement for maximum likelihood estimation. It is explained how these difficulties can be resolved. and then parameter estimation and hypothesis testing are discussed. A practical example is given.