Robust Multidimensional Scaling (Robust MDS)

Robust multidimensional scaling recovers a low-dimensional spatial map from a matrix of pairwise dissimilarities while resisting distortion caused by outlying or erroneous proximity values. By replacing squared-error loss with a robust loss function or down-weighting suspect pairs, it produces a configuration that faithfully represents the bulk of the data even when some distances are grossly atypical.