Steven Sanderson is from the 5th dimension:
Visualizing similarities between data points can be tricky, especially when dealing with many features. This is where multidimensional scaling (MDS) comes in handy. It allows us to explore these relationships in a lower-dimensional space, typically 2D or 3D for easier interpretation. In R, the
cmdscale()function from base R and is a great tool for performing classical MDS.
Click through to see how this works. In case you’re curious, cmdscale() is an example of principal coordinates analysis. If you’re familiar with principal components analysis, that’s a different form of multidimensional scaling.