Contracted by my old professor, I created a prototype for doing interactive multidimensional scaling. MDS is a statistical method, which can reveal similarities, or dissimilarities for that matter, between samples. Using a distance matrix, which results from a pairwise comparison, a solver distributes the samples. By letting the solver work continuously, it's easy to make this process interactive, like enabling users to interact with the visualization directly.
MDS Interactive
Multidimensional Scaling can be used purely as a method for statistical analysis, but by making it interactive, it becomes more of a data visualization, which allows users to explore data sets in a more playful way. My old professor, Pieter Jan Stappers, has been experimenting with MDS Interactive for some years now, but wanted something more flexible, like being able to open data sets, instead of fixing those in the prototype.
I built the prototype using Flash, as it enabled me to target both the web and te desktop. For the desktop version, I had to target AIR, as one the requirements was that users should be able to open local files. As an added bonus, creating custom menu items for opening files and other operations is easy. The prototype features two distribution fields: a large one to compare samples and a smaller one to compare the samples' dimensions. The sprites representing the samples and dimensions are draggable, so users can test for other stable distributions. The applications manager top right allows users to make some changes to the solver as well as select samples and dimensions, which cause the distance matrices to be recalculated. This prototype is a work in progress.
In case the embedded version is too small, a direct link to the prototype is available here.