[R] distance in the function kmeans

[Uwe Ligges]

n.bouget wrote:

> Hi,
> I want to know which distance is using in the function kmeans
> and if we can change this distance. 
> Indeed, in the function pam, we can put a distance matrix in
> parameter (by the line "pam<-pam(dist(matrixdata),k=7)" ) but
> we can't do it in the function kmeans, we have to put the
> matrix of data directly ...
> Thanks in advance,
> Nicolas BOUGET

As the name says, kmeans() calculates *means* (centres) of clusters. It 
does not any make sense to do that on distances ...

Uwe Ligges


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