USING FACTOR ANALYSIS AS AN AIDED TOOL FOR EVALUATING LAYOUT DESIGN ALTERNATIVES

摘要

This paper presents factor analysis, a dimension reduction technique, as an aided tool for evaluating layout design alternatives. This technique uses correlation to cluster criteria into a greatly reduced number of significant traits. The reduced set of traits allows for easier decision-making. Providing information about the interactions among the criteria, and handling both quantitative and qualitative data, are some of its other advantages. An illustrative example in which factor analysis is applied to a case study from literature is presented.