# What is Principal Component Analysis (PCA)?

_Last updated: 2026-07-20_  
_Reviewed by: Jason Burns, Editorial Steward_  
_Published by: AIDirectAnswers.com · Licensed under Citation License 1.0_

## Short answer

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a linear dimensionality-reduction technique that finds the orthogonal directions of greatest variance in a dataset and projects the data onto a smaller number of those directions, preserving as much variance as possible.

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_Author: [Jason Burns](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-randolph-burns), Editorial Steward_  
_Published: 2026-07-20 · Modified: 2026-07-20_  
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