A joint treatment of varimax rotation and the problem of diagonalizing symmetric matrices simultaneously in the least-squares sense (Q1058244)

The present paper contains a lemma which implies that varimax rotation can be interpreted as a special case of diagonalizing symmetric matrices as discussed in multidimensional scaling. It is shown that the solution by \textit{J. de Leeuw} and \textit{S. Pruzansky} [ibid. 43, 479-490 (1978; Zbl 0401.62083)] is essentially equivalent to the solution by \textit{H. F. Kaiser} [ibid. 23, 187-200 (1958; Zbl 0095.336)]. Necessary and sufficient conditions for maxima and minima are derived from first and second order partial derivatives. A counter-example by \textit{F. Gebhardt} [ibid. 33, 35-36 (1968)] is reformulated and examined in terms of these conditions. It is concluded that Kaiser's method or, equivalently, the method by De Leeuw and Pruzansky is the most attractive method currently available for the problem at hand.