[R] Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) in R

[Michael Friendly]

Smallest space analysis (SSA) is just the name given to software 
developed by Guttman & Lingoes around the time the various versions
of multidimensional scaling were being developed.  Call it Israeli MDS
or Falafel MDS if you prefer. The reason you encountered it in your
course is presumably that the instructor was trained in that.

There are several variants of MDS-like algorithms for embedding
points representing objects in a space, using data representing
similarities or distances among objects -- metric (cmdscale)
and non-metric (MASS::isoMDS), using only rank order information, and a 
variety of
measures of goodness-of-fit ("stress").  I don't recall the details
of the SSA programs, but that should matter little conceptually.

The smacof package offers the widest array of possibilities.

-Michael


On 9/19/2018 7:00 AM, Andrew wrote:
> Hi
> 
> As part of my forensics psych course, we have been introduced to
> Guttman's smallest space analysis (SSA). I want to explore this approach
> using R, but despite finding some queries on the web about this same
> thing, have yet to find any answers. The MASS package doesn't seem to do
> the job, and the only thing I have been able to find is some proprietary
> software HUDAP  (Hebrew University Data Analysis Package) which may/ not
> be compatible with R (or GNU/Linux for that matter).
> 
> Does anyone have information on how to do SSA using R?
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
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