A study of the tangent space model of the von Mises-Fisher distrubution.
For a random rotation X = M e where M is a 3 x 3 rotation, ε is a trivariate random vector, and φ(ε) is a skew symmetric matrix, the least squares criterion consists of seeking a rotation M called the mean rotation minimizing tr[(M - E(X)) (M - E(X))]. Some conditions on the distribution of ε are set so that the least squares estimator is unbiased. Of interest is when ε is normally distributed N(0;Σ). Unbiasedness of the least squares estimator is dealt with according to eigenvalues of Σ.