Central axes and peripheral points in high dimensional directional datasets

We introduce a new notion of central axis for a finite set $$\{a_1,\ldots ,a_m\}$${a1,…,am} of vectors in $$\mathbb {R}^n$$Rn. In tandem, we discuss different ways of measuring the dispersion of the data points $$a_i$$ai’s around the central axis. Finally, we explain how to detect numerically the most peripheral points of the given dataset.