Dissimilarity Matrix Object

DESCRIPTION:

These are objects of class

dissimilarity

They represent the dissimilarity matrix of a dataset.

GENERATION:

daisy returns this class of objects. Also the functions pam, clara, fanny, agnes, and diana return a dissimilarity object, as one component of their return objects.

METHODS:

The "dissimilarity" class has methods for the following generic functions: print .

STRUCTURE:

The dissimilarity matrix is symmetric, and hence is represented as a vector to save storage space. For i less than j, the dissimilarity between row i and row j is element nrow(x)*(i-1) - i*(i-1)/2 + j-i of that vector. The length of the vector is nrow(x)*(nrow(x)-1)/2, that is, it is of order nrow(x) squared. The object has the following attributes:

ARGUMENTS:

Size
the number of observations in the dataset.
Metric
the metric used for calculating the dissimilarities. Possible values are "euclidean", "manhattan", "mixed" (if variables of different types were present in the dataset), and "unspecified".
Labels
optionally, contains the labels, if any, of the observations of the dataset.
NA.message
optionally, if a dissimilarity could not be computed, because of too many missing values for some observations of the dataset.

SEE ALSO:

, , , , , , .