Radial velocity studies of close binary stars. VII. Methods and uncertainties

Methods used in the radial velocity program of short-period binary systems at the David Dunlap Observatory are described with particular stress on the broadening-function formalism. This formalism makes it possible to determine radial velocities from the complex spectra of multiple-component systems with component stars showing very different degrees of rotational line broadening. The statistics of random errors of orbital parameters are discussed on the basis of the available orbital solutions presented in the six previous papers of the series, each with 10 orbits. The difficult matter of systematic uncertainties in orbital parameters is illustrated for the typical case of GM Dra from Paper VI.