isoMDS {MASS} | R Documentation

## Kruskal's Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling

### Description

One form of non-metric multidimensional scaling

### Usage

    isoMDS(d, y = cmdscale(d, 2), maxit = 50, trace = TRUE)

### Arguments

`d` | distance structure of the form returned by `dist`, or a full, symmetric matrix. Data are assumed to be dissimilarities or relative distances, but must be positive except for self-distance.
`y` | An initial configuration. If none is supplied, `cmdscale` is used to provide the classical solution. The dimension of the initial configuration determines that of the answer
`maxit` | The maximum number of iterations.
`trace` | Logical for tracing optimization. Default `true`.

### Details

This chooses a k-dimensional (default k = 2) configuration to minimize the stress, the square root of the ratio of the the sum of squared differences between the input distances and those of the configuration to the sum of configuration distances squared. However, the input distances are allowed a monotonic transformation.

An iterative algorithm is used, which will usually converge in around 10 iterations. As this is necessarily an O(n^2) calculation, it is slow for large datasets. Further, since the configuration is only determined up to rotations and reflections (by convention the centroid is at the origin), the result can vary considerably from machine to machine.

### Value

Two components:

`points` | A two-column vector of the fitted configuration.
`stress` | The final stress achieved (in percent).

### Side Effects

If `trace` is true, the initial stress and the current stress are printed out every 5 iterations.

### References

T. F. Cox and M. A. A. Cox (1994) Multidimensional Scaling. Chapman & Hall.

### See Also

`cmdscale`, `sammon`

### Examples

    library(mva) # for dist
    data(swiss)
    swiss.x <- as.matrix(swiss[, -1])
    swiss.dist <- dist(swiss.x)
    swiss.mds <- isoMDS(swiss.dist)
    plot(swiss.mds$points, type="n")
    text(swiss.mds$points, labels=as.character(1:nrow(swiss.x)))
    swiss.sh <- Shepard(swiss.dist, swiss.mds$points)
    plot(swiss.sh)
    lines(swiss.sh$x, swiss.sh$yf, type="S")