An Accurate MDS-Based Algorithm for the Visualization of Large Multidimensional Datasets

Abstract

A common task in data mining is the visualization of multivariate objects on scatterplots, allowing human observers to perceive subtle inter-relations in the dataset such as outliers, groupings or other regularities. Least- squares multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a well known Exploratory Data Analysis family of techniques that produce dissimilarity or distance preserving layouts in a nonlinear way. In this framework, the issue of visualizing large multidimensional datasets through MDS-based methods is addressed. An original scheme providing very accurate layouts of large datasets is introduced. It is a compromise between the computational complexity O(N5/2) and the accuracy of the solution that makes it suitable both for visualization of fairly large datasets and preprocessing in pattern recognition tasks.