Projection error term in Gowerʹs interpolation

New points can be superimposed on a Euclidean configuration obtained as a result of a metric multidimensional scaling at coordinates given by Gowerʹs interpolation formula. The procedure amounts to discarding a, possibly nonnull, coordinate along an additional dimension. We derive an analytical formula for this projection error term and, for real data problems, we describe a statistical method for testing its significance, as a cautionary device prior to further distance-based predictions.