The R Package fechner for Fechnerian Scaling

Abstract

Fechnerian scaling provides a theoretical framework for constructing distances among objects representing subjective dissimilarities. A metric, called Fechnerian, on a set of objects (e.g., colors, symbols, X-ray films, or even statistical models) is computed from the probabilities with which two objects within the set are discriminated from each other by a system (e.g., person, technical device, or even computational algorithm) “perceiving” these objects. This paper presents the package fechner for performing Fechnerian scaling of object sets in R. We describe the functions of the package and demonstrate their usage on real Morse code data.