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Re: st: Performing -mdslong- on a constant


From   [email protected] (Jean Marie Linhart, StataCorp LP)
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Performing -mdslong- on a constant
Date   Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:17:13 -0600

Zachary Neal <stata_at_uic at yahoo dot com> asked

> This is a more general question about multidimensional
> scaling, but I can't tell if the answer may have
> something to do with the way stata executes the
> command.

> I am trying to figure out the meaning of the
> configuration that is yielded by -mdslong- when
> applied to a constant (i.e. all point-to-point
> distances are equal).  Intuitively, I would expect a
> regular pattern that is independent of the number of
> points and magnitude of the constant - perhaps a
> circle, or a uniform distribution.  But, the number of
> points and magnitude of the constant seem to matter,
> with each combination yielding a unique configuration.

> Can anyone point me in the direction of a reference
> that might explain what is happening here?

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a data reduction/visualization technique.  It
allows you to visualize high-dimensional data in a more intuitive 2 (or more,
but usually 2) dimensional Euclidean space where the distances between points
approximate the dissimilarities in the original space.

Zach is dealing with configurations that have original points all at equal
dissimilarities to each other.  In 2 dimensional Euclidean space, you can only
do this with 3 points in an equilateral triangle.  In 3 dimensional space, 4
points can be equidistant in a tetrahedron.  You can add one point in 4-space
and also get such a configuration with 5 points (a pentahedron?), and so on to
6 equidistant points in 5-space and beyond.  If Zach is dealing with K>3
points at equal dissimilarity, his configuration cannot be exactly represented
in K-1 or less dimensional space; in a lower-dimensional space the
approximating configuration is going to have some distances larger and some
distances smaller than the others.

If you do classical MDS with 3 points, you get an equilateral triangle which is
what you expect.  The triangle can move around; the configuration is determined
only up to rotation and reflection.  Let's see this happen.  I'm going to start
from the morse_long data set.  This is a 45 item dataset of morse codes for the
digits 0-9; I will use the identifying information from the dataset and
generate my own dissimilarity.   To see the equilateral triangle I will
restrict to the first 3 observations.  I generate equal dissimilarity data.

. webuse morse_long
. gen dissim = .5
. mdslong dissim in 1/3, id(digit1 digit2)

If you assume a different constant value for the dissimilarity, you get another
equilateral triangle.  Configurations are equivalent up to rotation and
reflection.  See:

. generate dissim2 = 5
. mdslong dissim2 in 1/3, id(digit1 digit2)

Now what happens if you use more points?  In classical MDS, you are doing an
eigen decomposition of a matrix then pulling 2 dimensions from it to display.
(Details in the [MV] manual.)  The dimensions correspond to the two largest
eigenvalues.  But if you have all dissimilarities equal then k-1 of the
eigenvalues are the same, with the last eigenvalue either very small or equal
to zero.  Even worse, it turns out that the eigenvectors aren't completely
determined (there are many equivalent sets).  These are the indeterminate
components in the configuration.  Not only is the solution indeterminate, but
each of the components explains an equal amount of the dissimilarity; the
approximation is poor.

If Zach tries
. mdslong dissim, id(digit1 digit2)
and
. mdslong dissim2, id(digit1 digit2)
He gets two unintuitive configurations; note that the two dimensions explain
only 22% of the dissimilarity.

Zach might prefer to turn to modern MDS in order to get configurations that are
more intuitive.  Modern MDS does not do an eigen decomposition, it calculates
the minimum of a -loss()- function (with or without transformation, the
-transform()- option).  You've got several options for -loss()- and
-transform()- which effect the configuration.  

Let's take a quick look at modern MDS, using all of the data:

. mdslong dissim, id(digit1 digit2) loss(stress) init(random) protect(20)

Now Zach is probably seeing a result that he likes.  This configuration is a
set of points placed regularly around a circle, plus a point at the center.
The points still are not equidistant, but the reuslt seems intuitive.
Options -loss(stress)-, -loss(nstress)- and -loss(sammon)- on this data give
similar configurations.  Because of the equivalent eigenvalues from classical
MDS, the default initialization was problematic; I used init(random) instead.
I use -protect(20)- to protect against convergence to a local, rather than a
global, minimum.  This makes multiple runs from different starting values and
takes the smallest as the final answer.

Options -loss(sstress)- and -loss(nsstress)- tend to give points on a circle,
though not as regularly spaced.

. mdslong dissim, id(digit1 digit2) loss(sstress) init(rand) protect(20)

Modern MDS with options -loss(strain)- and -transform(identity)- is equivalent
to classical MDS and gives the indeterminate behavior Zach observed before. 

I hope this offers some insight into what is going on with MDS.  

--Jean Marie
[email protected]
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