Multidimensional scaling in two dimensions

In this exercise, you will perform multidimensional scaling of state.x77 and plot the resulting object locations in a two dimensional space.

This exercise is part of the course

Multivariate Probability Distributions in R

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Exercise instructions

Compute the distance matrix and assign it to an object state.dist.
Compute the multidimensional scaling of the data on the distance matrix.
Use the ggplot() function to plot the representation of the state.x77 data in two dimensions. Color the state names by their region using the vector state.region.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Calculate distance 
state.dist <- dist(___)

# Perform multidimensional scaling 
mds.state <- cmdscale(___) 

# Change mds.state to a data frame for use in ggplot
mds.state_df <- data.frame(mds.state)

# Plot the representation of the data in two dimensions 
ggplot(data = ___, aes(x = X1, y = X2, label = rownames(mds.state), color = ____)) + 
    geom_text(alpha = 0.8, size = 3)

Edit and Run Code