Proposed Manuscript Chronology

[npcompl33t]

I'm impressed by your work @npcompl33t. It's also fascinating to come to know of what look to be relatively recent development in dimensionality reduction (I was stuck to PCA...). I have bookmarked the Diaconis at al. arXiv article you referenced and I'll try to read it with calm, but the introduction rather agrees with what you affirm: dominant gradients create the horseshoe shape.

If I understood well, you also found support for @LisaFaginDavis theory that the VMS 'unit' is the bifolio, am I right?

And a (possibly silly, sorry) question: could the gradient also be in reverse, first Bio and last Herbal A?

Thank you! Yes, this shows that all pages on a bifolio are a functional unit, LFD's proposal is in my opinion absolutely confirmed. Honestly, it is so apparent in the data I assumed her findings had become widely accepted and didn't need any qualifications.

Your 2nd question is not silly, and yes, absolutely the gradient could be in reverse, A path can be found but the order can't be specified from the data, I am making the assumption that Herbal A is the start and Bio is the end.