CMFs of Sh2-284. (a) Raw CMFs derived from the full dendrogram catalog and the robust dendrogram+Gaussian catalog, assuming a uniform dust temperature of 20 K. Dashed lines show the MLE power-law fits above M > 2.5 M_⊙. (b) Recovery-corrected true CMFs; for the full catalog, both flux and number corrections are applied, while for the robust catalog only the number correction is applied. Dashed lines show the binned MLE power-law fits above M > 2.5 M_⊙. With the adopted logarithmic binning, the first included bin has a lower edge of 3.162 M_⊙. (c) Forward-modeling distributions of the intrinsic CMF slope for the two catalogs; the vertical solid line marks the Salpeter value, α = 1.35. (d) Raw CMF for the robust catalog after assigning each core the local Herschel-derived dust temperature. The dashed line shows the MLE power-law fit for M > 2.5 M_⊙. (e) Number-corrected CMF for the same temperature assignment. The dashed line shows the binned MLE power-law fits for M > 2.5 M_⊙. (f) Monte Carlo temperature test in which core temperatures are randomly varied around the local Herschel values, with an additional warmer bright core case to test unresolved internal heating (see Section 3.4 for details). The vertical line marks the Salpeter slope.