Melanie, I can't tell you what SAS will or will not do, but I do know that NMDS does not provide proportions of variance explained by axes in the same way that PCA does.
One thing you can do however, (which PC-Ord will do for you, or if you have enough time, you could do on a spreadsheet), is to simply run a regression of the distances in ordination space for each axis against the original distances (which either you provided to SAS or were calculated for you in Proc MDS; e.g., Sorensen distances, Euclidean distances, etc.). You could then calculate coefficients of determination (r2) for each axis. I doubt that SAS will provide the distances in ordination space for you (although it might calculate the original distances). McCune and Grace's book Analysis of Ecological Communities gives a pretty good (probably better) explanation of what I'm talking about. Good luck, Steve Brewer >Does anyone know how to get SAS to output the proportion of variance >explained by each axis when using Proc MDS? > >Thank you. >Melanie -- Department of Biology PO Box 1848 University of Mississippi University, Mississippi 38677-1848 Brewer web page - http://home.olemiss.edu/~jbrewer/ FAX - 662-915-5144 Phone - 662-915-1077
