Similarity and Dissimilarity Measures

• Similarity measure
• Numerical measure of how alike two data objects are.
• Is higher when objects are more alike.
• Often falls in the range [0,1]
• Dissimilarity measure
• Numerical measure of how different two data objects are
• Lower when objects are more alike
• Minimum dissimilarity is often 0
• Upper limit varies
• Proximity refers to a similarity or dissimilarity
Similarity/Dissimilarity for Simple Attributes
The following table shows the similarity and dissimilarity
between two objects, x and y, with respect to a single, simple
attribute.
 Euclidean Distance
• Euclidean Distance

where n is the number of dimensions (attributes) and xk and yk are,

respectively, the kth attributes (components) or data objects x and y.
• x = (3, 6, 0, 3, 6)
• y = (1, 2, 0, 1,2)
• dist x, y = (3 − 1)2 +(6 − 2)2 + (0 − 0)2 +(3 − 1)2 +(6 − 2)2
dist x, y = 6.324

Standardization is necessary, if scales differ.

Euclidean Distance

3
point x y
2 p1
p1 0 2
p3 p4
1
p2 2 0
p2 p3 3 1
0 p4 5 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

p1 p2 p3 p4
p1 0 2.828 3.162 5.099
p2 2.828 0 1.414 3.162
p3 3.162 1.414 0 2
p4 5.099 3.162 2 0
Distance Matrix
Minkowski Distance

• Minkowski Distance is a generalization of

Euclidean Distance Where r is a parameter, n is the
number of dimensions (attributes) and xk and yk
are, respectively, the kth attributes (components) or
data objects x and y.

•
Minkowski Distance: Examples

• r = 1. City block (Manhattan, taxicab, L1 norm) distance.

• A common example of this for binary vectors is the Hamming
distance, which is just the number of bits that are different between
two binary vectors

• r = 2. Euclidean distance

• r → . “supremum” (Lmax norm, L norm) distance.

• This is the maximum difference between any component of the
vectors
 Hamming Distance
• Hamming distance is the number of positions in
which bit-vectors differ.
• Example: p1 = 10101
p2 = 10011.
• d(p1, p2) = 2 because the bit-vectors differ in the 3rd and 4th
positions.
• The L1 norm for the binary vectors

8
Distances for real vectors
• Vectors 𝑥 = 𝑥1 , … , 𝑥𝑑 and 𝑦 = (𝑦1 , … , 𝑦𝑑 )
• Lp norms or Minkowski distance:
𝐿𝑝 𝑥, 𝑦 = 𝑥1 − 𝑦1 𝑝 + ⋯ + 𝑥𝑑 − 𝑦𝑑 𝑝 1ൗ𝑝

• L2 norm: Euclidean distance:

𝐿2 𝑥, 𝑦 = 𝑥1 − 𝑦1 2 + ⋯ + 𝑥𝑑 − 𝑦𝑑 2

• L1 norm: Manhattan distance:

𝐿1 𝑥, 𝑦 = 𝑥1 − 𝑦1 + ⋯ + |𝑥𝑑 − 𝑦𝑑 |

• L∞ norm:
𝐿∞ 𝑥, 𝑦 = max 𝑥1 − 𝑦1 , … , |𝑥𝑑 − 𝑦𝑑 |
• The limit of Lp as p goes to infinity.
Minkowski Distance
L1 p1 p2 p3 p4
p1 0 4 4 6
p2 4 0 2 4
p3 4 2 0 2
p4 6 4 2 0
point x y
p1 0 2 L2 p1 p2 p3 p4
p2 2 0 p1 0 2.828 3.162 5.099
p3 3 1 p2 2.828 0 1.414 3.162
p4 5 1 p3 3.162 1.414 0 2
p4 5.099 3.162 2 0

L p1 p2 p3 p4
p1 0 2 3 5
p2 2 0 1 3
p3 3 1 0 2
p4 5 3 2 0

Distance Matrix
Example of Distances
y = (9,8)
L2-norm:
𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡(𝑥, 𝑦) = 42 + 32 = 5

5 3
L1-norm:
4 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡(𝑥, 𝑦) = 4 + 3 = 7
x = (5,5)

L∞-norm:
𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡(𝑥, 𝑦) = max 3,4 = 4
11
Common Properties of a Distance
• Distances, such as the Euclidean distance, have
some well known properties.
1. d(x, y)  0 for all x and y and d(x, y) = 0 if and only if
x = y.
2. d(x, y) = d(y, x) for all x and y. (Symmetry)
3. d(x, z)  d(x, y) + d(y, z) for all points x, y, and z.
(Triangle Inequality)
where d(x, y) is the distance (dissimilarity) between points
(data objects), x and y.

• A distance that satisfies these properties is a metric

Similarity Between Binary Vectors
• Common situation is that objects, x and y, have only binary
attributes
• Compute similarities using the following quantities
f01 = the number of attributes where x was 0 and y was 1
f10 = the number of attributes where x was 1 and y was 0
f00 = the number of attributes where x was 0 and y was 0
f11 = the number of attributes where x was 1 and y was 1

• Simple Matching and Jaccard Coefficients

SMC = number of matches / number of attributes
= (f11 + f00) / (f01 + f10 + f11 + f00)
J = number of 11 matches / number of non-zero attributes
= (f11) / (f01 + f10 + f11)
SMC versus Jaccard: Example
x= 1000000000
y= 0000001001

f01 = 2 (the number of attributes where x was 0 and y was 1)

f10 = 1 (the number of attributes where x was 1 and y was 0)
f00 = 7 (the number of attributes where x was 0 and y was 0)
f11 = 0 (the number of attributes where x was 1 and y was 1)

SMC = (f11 + f00) / (f01 + f10 + f11 + f00)

= (0+7) / (2+1+0+7) = 0.7

J = (f11) / (f01 + f10 + f11) = 0 / (2 + 1 + 0) = 0

Jaccard: Example
 Cosine Similarity
• If d1 and d2 are two document vectors, then
cos( d1, d2 ) = <d1,d2> / ||d1|| ||d2|| ,
where <d1,d2> indicates inner product or vector dot product of vectors, d1 and d2,
and || d || is the length of vector d.
X = x 2
i X •Y  (x i  yi )
i cos( X , Y ) = = i
X  y xi
2
i  y
i
2
i

• Example:
d1 = 3 2 0 5 0 0 0 2 0 0
d2 = 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2
<d1, d2> ( d1 • d2 ) =3*1 + 2*0 + 0*0 + 5*0 + 0*0 + 0*0 + 0*0 + 2*1 + 0*0 + 0*2 = 5
|| d1 || = (3*3+2*2+0*0+5*5+0*0+0*0+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0)0.5 = (42) 0.5 = 6.481
|| d2 || = (1*1+0*0+0*0+0*0+0*0+0*0+0*0+1*1+0*0+2*2) 0.5 = (6) 0.5 = 2.449
cos(d1, d2 ) = 0.3150
Common Properties of a Similarity
• Similarities, also have some well known
properties.
1. s(x, y) = 1 (or maximum similarity) only if x = y.
2. s(x, y) = s(y, x) for all x and y. (Symmetry)

where s(x, y) is the similarity between points (data objects),

x and y.
Similarities into distances
• Jaccard distance:
𝐽𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡(𝑋, 𝑌) = 1 – 𝐽𝑆𝑖𝑚(𝑋, 𝑌)

• Jaccard Distance is a metric

• Cosine distance:
𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡(𝑋, 𝑌) = 1 − cos(𝑋, 𝑌)