A Comparison of Three Rational Initialization Methods for INDSCAL

1. INTRODUCTION: In the INDSCAL model (Carroll & Chang, 1970), the dissimilarity for subject i between objects j and k, written as delta sub ijk, is represented by the weighted Euclidean distance d sub ijk = sum sub (r=1) sup (R) w sub (jr)-x sub (kr) sup (2) sup 1/2 where X=((x sub jr)) denotes the coordinates of the J stimuli on the R dimensions, and where W sub i=diag(w sub i1,...,w sub iR) contains the (non-negative) weights attached by subject i to the dimensions.