Distance Functions
Distance Functions
x ·y
dcos(x, y ) = 1 −
∥x∥ · ∥y ∥
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Non-zero vectors in Rn
▶ x · y : Dot product
▶ ∥x∥, ∥y ∥: Euclidean norms
▶ Range: 0 (same direction) to 2 (opposite directions)
Use Cases:
Information Retrieval: Document similarity
Recommender Systems: User preference matching
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Euclidean Distance
Measures the straight-line distance between two vectors in
space; equal to the length of their difference vector
v
u n
uX
d(x, y ) = t (xi − yi )2 = ∥x − y ∥2
i=1
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Vectors in Rn
▶ xi − yi : Difference at dimension i
▶ ∥x − y ∥2 : L2 norm of the difference vector
Use Cases:
k-Nearest Neighbors: Finding similar data points
k-Means: Clusters data by minimizing intra-cluster
distances.
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Mahalanobis Distance
Measures distance while accounting for correlations among
features
q
d(x, y ) = (x − y )T Σ−1 (x − y )
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Vectors in Rn
▶ Σ−1 : Inverse covariance matrix
▶ Normalizes by feature covariances
Use Cases:
Outlier Detection: Accounts for feature correlations
Classification: Handles different feature scales and
correlations
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Hellinger Distance
Measures how different two probability distributions are
v
u n
1 uXp p
H(P, Q) = √ t ( Pi − Qi )2
2 i=1
Terms Explained:
▶ P, Q: Probability distributions
√
▶ Pi : Square root of probability at position i
▶ H(P, Q) ∈ [0, 1]: 0 = identical, 1 = no overlap
Use Cases:
Anomaly Detection: Identifies statistical deviations
Imbalance-aware Algorithms: Used in Hellinger Distance
Decision Trees for handling class imbalance.
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Jaccard Distance
Measures how different two sets are by comparing their
shared and unique elements
|X ∩ Y |
dJ (X , Y ) = 1 −
|X ∪ Y |
Terms Explained:
▶ X , Y : Two sets
▶ |X ∩ Y |: Size of intersection
▶ |X ∪ Y |: Size of union
▶ Range: 0 (identical) to 1 (disjoint)
Use Cases:
Document Similarity: Comparing text as word sets
Recommender Systems: Finding similar user preferences
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Manhattan Distance
Measures distance as the sum of absolute differences along
each axis
n
X
d(x, y ) = |xi − yi | = ∥x − y ∥1
i=1
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Vectors in Rn
▶ |xi − yi |: Absolute difference at dimension i
▶ ∥x − y ∥1 : L1 norm (taxicab norm)
Use Cases:
Grid Navigation: Calculating city block distances
Feature Selection: L1 Regularizer
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Correlation Distance
Measures dissimilarity based on how variables are
statistically related
cov(x, y )
dcorr (x, y ) = 1 − ρ(x, y ) = 1 −
σx σy
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Data vectors of equal length
▶ ρ(x, y ): Pearson correlation coefficient
▶ cov(x, y ): Covariance between x and y
▶ σx , σy : Standard deviations
Use Case:
Feature Agglomeration: Correlation Clustering
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Dice Distance/Loss
Measures set dissimilarity, placing greater emphasis on
shared elements than the Jaccard distance
2|X ∩ Y |
dD (X , Y ) = 1 −
|X | + |Y |
Terms Explained:
▶ X , Y : Two sets
▶ |X ∩ Y |: Size of intersection
▶ |X | + |Y |: Sum of set sizes
▶ Range: 0 (identical) to 1 (no overlap)
Use Cases:
Image Segmentation: Evaluates segmentation overlap in
image analysis; also as a loss function
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Hamming Distance
Counts the number of positions where two sequences differ
n
X
dH (x, y ) = I(xi ̸= yi )
i=1
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Equal-length sequences
▶ I(xi ̸= yi ): Indicator function (1 if xi ̸= yi , 0
otherwise)
▶ Counts positions where elements differ
Use Cases:
Error Detection: Hamming codes for transmission errors
Bioinformatics: Comparing DNA sequences
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Chebyshev Distance
Measures distance between vectors using the largest
absolute difference in any dimension
Terms Explained:
▶ x, y : Vectors in Rn
▶ maxi |xi − yi |: Maximum absolute difference
▶ ∥x − y ∥∞ : L∞ norm (chessboard distance)
Use Cases:
Anomaly Detection: Flags outliers based on the largest
deviation across features
Warehouse Optimization: Finding minimax distances
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