An Experiential Exercise in Multidimensional Scaling

"Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) is a set of multivariate analysis techniques widely used in behavioral and marketing research. It has been the subject of numerous books, papers, and journal articles. However, it is also a technology that appears rather mysterious to both managers and students, who will become tomorrow’s managers. The purpose of the exercise described in this paper is to provide students with a comprehensible, hands-on, MDS experience. The experience is in two parts. The first is the recovery of a geometric figure designed by the student. The second is an actual application of MDS by the student with himself as the respondent. "