Grain boundaries affect properties of polycrystals. Novel experimental techniques for three-dimensional orientation mapping give new opportunities for studies of this influence. Large networks of boundaries can be analyzed based on all five 'macroscopic' boundary parameters. We demonstrate benefits of applying two methods for improving these analyses. The fractions of geometrically special boundaries in ferrite are estimated based on 'approximate' distances to the nearest special boundaries: by using these parameters, the times needed for processing boundary data sets are shortened. Moreover, grain-boundary distributions for nickel are obtained using kernel density estimation; this approach leads to distribution functions more accurate than those obtained based on partition of the space into bins.
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