website/static/~brozek/index.html?research%2FClusterAnalysis%2Fnotes%2Flec2-1.html

100 lines
4.4 KiB
HTML
Raw Normal View History

2020-01-15 23:07:02 -05:00
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta name="author" content="Fredrik Danielsson, http://lostkeys.se">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<title>Brandon Rozek</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/bitsandpieces/styles/main.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/bitsandpieces/styles/highlightjs-github.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<aside class="main-nav">
<nav>
<ul>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Findex.html" data-shortcut="">
Home
</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Fcourses.html" data-shortcut="">
Courses
</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Flabaide.html" data-shortcut="">
Lab Aide
</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Fpresentations.html" data-shortcut="">
Presentations
</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Fresearch.html" data-shortcut="">
Research
</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem ">
<a href="index.html%3Ftranscript.html" data-shortcut="">
Transcript
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</aside>
<main class="main-content">
<article class="article">
<h1>Why use different distance measures?</h1>
<p>I made an attempt to find out in what situations people use different distance measures. Looking around in the Internet usually produces the results &quot;It depends on the problem&quot; or &quot;I typically just always use Euclidean&quot;</p>
<p>Which as you might imagine, isn't a terribly useful answer. Since it doesn't give me any examples of which types of problems different distances solve.</p>
<p>Therefore, let's think about it in a different way. What properties do different distance measures have that make them desirable?</p>
<h2>Manhattan Advantages</h2>
<ul>
<li>The gradient of this function has a constant magnitude. There's no power in the formula</li>
<li>Unusual values affect distances on Euclidean more since the difference is squared</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/20075/when-would-one-use-manhattan-distance-as-opposite-to-euclidean-distance">https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/20075/when-would-one-use-manhattan-distance-as-opposite-to-euclidean-distance</a></p>
<h2>Mahalanobis Advantages</h2>
<p>Variables can be on different scales. The Mahalanobis formula has a built in variance-covariance matrix which allows you to rescale your variables to make distances of different variables more comparable.</p>
<p><a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/50949/why-use-the-mahalanobis-distance#50956">https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/50949/why-use-the-mahalanobis-distance#50956</a></p>
<h2>Euclidean Disadvantages</h2>
<p>In higher dimensions, the points essentially become uniformly distant from one another. This is a problem observed in most distance metrics but it's more obvious with the Euclidean one.</p>
<p><a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/99171/why-is-euclidean-distance-not-a-good-metric-in-high-dimensions/">https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/99171/why-is-euclidean-distance-not-a-good-metric-in-high-dimensions/</a></p>
<p>Hopefully in this course, we'll discover more properties as to why it makes sense to use different distance measures since it can have a impact on how our clusters are formed.</p>
</article>
</main>
<script src="themes/bitsandpieces/scripts/highlight.js"></script>
<script src="themes/bitsandpieces/scripts/mousetrap.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/x-mathjax-config">
MathJax.Hub.Config({
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$','$'], ["\\(","\\)"] ],
processEscapes: true
}
});
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML">
</script>
<script>
hljs.initHighlightingOnLoad();
document.querySelectorAll('.menuitem a').forEach(function(el) {
if (el.getAttribute('data-shortcut').length > 0) {
Mousetrap.bind(el.getAttribute('data-shortcut'), function() {
location.assign(el.getAttribute('href'));
});
}
});
</script>
</body>
</html>