[R] 'distance' between a vector and a permutation of the vector

[Rajarshi Guha]

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Hi, I've been trying to identify a good way to do the following:

Say I have a vector of unique, integers

x <- c(1,3,2,4,5)

I then have a permuted version of the above vector, say

y <- c(1,3,5,2,4)

Is there an easy way to get the "distance" between the two vectors.  
The sense I'm thinking of is such, that if we have

y <- c(1,3,2,5,4)

then this is 'closer' to x, since there is only one pair that is mis- 
ordered, compared to something like

y <- c(1,5,3,4,2)

It seems that a good candidate would be the levenstein distance - is  
there a function that would work on vectors of integers rather than  
strings? Are there more suitable candidates?

Thanks for any pointers

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Rajarshi Guha  <rguha at indiana.edu>
GPG Fingerprint: D070 5427 CC5B 7938 929C  DD13 66A1 922C 51E7 9E84
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Q:  What's polite and works for the phone company?
A:  A deferential operator.


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