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Suppressing Permutations or Rigid Planar Rotations: A Remedy Against Nonoptimal Varimax Rotations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Jos M. F. ten Berge
Jos M. F. ten Berge*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Jos M. F. ten Berge, Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, THE NETHERLANDS.
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Abstract

Varimax rotation consists of iteratively rotating pairs of columns of a matrix to a maximal sum (over columns) of variances of squared elements of the matrix. Without loss of optimality, the two rotated columns can be permuted and/or reflected. Although permutations and reflections are harmless for each planar rotation per se, they can be harmful in Varimax rotation. Specifically, they often give rise to the phenomenon that certain pairs of columns are consistently skipped in the iterative process, whence Varimax will be terminated at a nonstationary point. The skipping phenomenon is demonstrated, and it is shown how to prevent it.

Keywords

Varimaxplanar rotationspermutationsreflections
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 437 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The author is obliged to Henk Kiers for commenting on a previous draft.

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