[R] adding a method to the dist function
Prof Brian Ripley
ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Mon May 3 13:05:21 CEST 2004
On Mon, 3 May 2004, Giampiero Salvi wrote:
> On Mon, 3 May 2004, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 3 May 2004, Giampiero Salvi wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > > I'd like to add the Bhattacharyya method to the dist function.
> > > What is the best way to do this? I'm using R 1.9.0 and I was looking
> > > for the code that defines the already existing distances, but I didn't
> > > manage. As far as I understand, dist is defined in mva that is part
> > > of the stats package now, but where is the code?
> >
> > In src/library/stats/src/distance.c
> >
> > Where else did you think the C source code for the stats package would be
> > but src/library/stats/src?
>
> Sorry,
> I was looking in the installation directory that of course
> didn't have a src dir...
>
> > You will need to add your own function, and BTW, I don't think `the
> > Bhattacharyya method' is appropriate for dist, as it is defined for
> > distributions, not data items. It's even defined that way in your own
> > paper
>
> I also had the same doubt. My intension was to interpret the data matrix
> as composed by vectors of means and covariances, but I did suspect that
> this would generate some confusion. Do you have any suggestions on where
> this method better belongs?
dist() compares pairs of rows in the x matrix. How can they have `means
and covariances'? -- you have a sample of size one from each of two
populations.
It seems that (Gaussian) Bhattacharyya is more like mahalanobis().
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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