Multidimensional scaling

Multidimensional scaling is a statistical technique to visualize dissimilarity data. In multidimensional scaling, objects are represented as points in a usually two dimensional space, such that the distances between the points match the observed dissimilarities as closely as possible. Here, we discuss what kind of data can be used for multidimensional scaling, what the essence of the technique is, how to choose the dimensionality, transformations of the dissimilarities, and some pitfalls to watch out for when using multidimensional scaling.