I want to carry out PCA on a set of chemical data, some of them in oxide form and some in elemental form. The oxides are in percentage and the elements are in ppm.

I have understood that, the data have to be normalised/standardised before starting PCA. Now,

1) Should I have to convert all oxides to element first?

2) Should I have to convert all into single type of unit (either percentage or ppm )?

3) For normalisation, should I go for lognormal (10), lognormal (2) or natural log? What is the best way to decide which one is ideal?

4) If some elements show lognormal (10) distribution and some show Ln distribution, can I apply them separately or a single method to be followed for all?

5) Can I attempt IDF-Normal method for normalisation of such data?

Kindly advise.

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