The function performs a singular value decomposition, A'Z = UDV', where
Z is a matrix of residuals (obtained from Y - see below) and A
is an alignment matrix with the same number of rows as Z.
(' indicates matrix transposition.) U and V
are the matrices of left and right singular vectors, and D is a diagonal matrix of singular
values. V are the vectors that describe maximized covariation between Y and A.
If A = I, an n x n identity matrix, V are the
eigen vectors (principal components) of Y.
Z represents a centered and potentially standardized form of Y. This
function can center data via OLS or GLS means (the latter if a covariance matrix to describe
the non-independence among observations is provided). If standardizing variables is preferred,
then Z both centers and scales the vectors of Y by their standard deviations.
Data are projected onto aligned vectors, ZV, which in the case of OLS residuals is
an orthogonal projection and in the case of GLS is an oblique projection.
The versatility of using an alignment approach is that alternative data space rotations are possible.
Principal components are thus the vectors that maximize variance with respect to the data, themselves,
but "components" of (co)variation can be described for any inter-matrix relationship, including
phylogenetic signal, ecological signal, ontogenetic signal, size allometry, etc.
More details are provided in Collyer and Adams (in review).
Much of this function is consistent with the prcomp
function, except that centering data
is not an option (it is required).
SUMMARY STATISTICS: For principal component plots, the traditional statistics to summarize the analysis include
eigenvalues (variance by component), proportion of variance by component, and cumulative proportion of variance.
When data are aligned to an alternative matrix, the statistics are less straightforward. A summary of
of such an analysis (performed with summary.ordinate
) will produce these additional statistics:
Singular Value Rather than eigenvalues, the singular values from singular value decomposition of the
cross-product of the scaled alignment matrix and the data.
Proportion of Covariance Each component's singular value divided by the sum of singular values. The cumulative
proportion is also returned. Note that these values do not explain the amount of covariance between the alignment matrix and data, but
explain the distribution of the covariance. Large proportions can be misleading.
RV by Component The partial RV statistic by component. Cumulative values are also returned. The sum of partial
RVs is Escoffier's RV statistic, which measures the amount of covariation between the alignment matrix and data. Caution should
be used in interpreting these values, which can vary with the number of observations and number of variables. However,
the RV is more reliable than proportion of singular value for interpretation of the strength of linear association for
aligned components. (It is most analogous to proportion of variance for principal components.)