at maximum excursion from linearity is the same for males and females, and is the same as the peak in the trajectory along axis 2 in the MDS analysis. The similarity between male and female trajectories is parallel to the similarity in the MDS plots. As suggested in Section 2, the plot might have been more informative had the ages defining the geodesic been closer to the initial and final points of the ascending part of MDS trajectory in axis 1. (By definition, the age at which the distance of the observed matrix from the linear geodesic is greatest is identical to the age at which the distance from the secondary geodesic is zero. Also by definition the distances along the secondary geodesic must be zero at the points chosen as the determinants of the primary geodesic.)
