MDS distances

[beaucham <beaucham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We ran an MDS calculation (using MatLab) on a 10x10 distance 
matrix based on dissimilarity judgements between all pairs of 
10 sounds, and obtained an 8-dimension solution, which gives
the coordinates of the sounds in 8-D space. The distances
between the positions of the sounds are supposed to match
the original distances. In fact, we get an rms error of 8%
and a max error of 30%.

Is this typical? Is MatLab's program accurate? Is there a way
to improve on the MDS results?

Jim Beauchamp
Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
jwbeauch@xxxxxxxx