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MDS Algorithms

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Applied Multidimensional Scaling

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Statistics ((BRIEFSSTATIST))

Abstract

Two types of solutions for MDS are discussed. If the proximities are Euclidean distances, classical MDS yields an easy algebraic solution. In most MDS applications, iterative methods are needed, because they admit many types of data and distances. They use a two-phase optimization algorithm, moving the points in MDS space in small steps while holding the data or their transforms fixed, and vice versa, until convergence is reached.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This means that the centroid of the MDS configuration becomes the origin. The coordinates of \(\mathbf X \), thus, should sum to 0 in each column of \(\mathbf X \). This does not carry any consequences for the distances of \(\mathbf X \), that is, any other point could also serve as the origin. However, one point must be picked as an origin to compute scalar products.

  2. 2.

    Smacof is an acronym for “Scaling by MAjorizing a COmplicated Function” (De Leeuw and Heiser 1980). The optimization method used by Smacof is called “Majorization” (De Leeuw 1977; Groenen 1993). The basic idea of this method is that a complicated goal function (i.e., Stress within the MDS context) is approximated in each iteration by a less complicated function which is easier to optimize. For more details on how this method is used to solve MDS problems, see De Leeuw and Mair (2009) or Borg and Groenen (2005).

  3. 3.

    Such options are sometimes called Kruskal, Guttman, Young or Torgerson, depending on their respective inventors or authors (see also Figs. 1.5, 9.8 and Sect. 7.5).

References

  • Basalaj, W. (2001). Proximity visualisation of abstract data. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cambridge University, U.K.

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  • Borg, I., & Groenen, P. J. F. (2005). Modern multidimensional scaling (\(2^\text{ nd}\) ed.). New York: Springer.

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  • De Leeuw, J. (1977). In J. R, Barra, F. Brodeau, G. Romier& B. van Cutsem (Eds.), Recent developments in statistics (pp. 133–145). Amsterdam: North Holland.

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  • De Leeuw, J., & Heiser, W. J. (1980). Multidimensional scaling with restrictions on the configuration. In P. R. Krishnaiah (Ed.), Multivariate analysis (pp. 501–522). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland.

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  • De Leeuw, J., & Mair, P. (2009). Multidimensional scaling using majorization: SMACOF in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 31(3), 1–30.

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  • Groenen, P. J. F. (1993). The majorization approach to multidimensional scaling: Some problems and extensions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Leiden, Rapenburg.

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Correspondence to Ingwer Borg .

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Borg, I., Groenen, P.J., Mair, P. (2013). MDS Algorithms. In: Applied Multidimensional Scaling. SpringerBriefs in Statistics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31848-1_8

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