How the distance between sets is called? - MathOverflow most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net2013-05-21T23:42:13Zhttp://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/58301http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdfhttp://mathoverflow.net/questions/58301/how-the-distance-between-sets-is-calledHow the distance between sets is called?Dair T'arg2011-03-13T01:04:17Z2011-03-13T04:27:41Z
<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I've recently write down some measure for sets and now I wonder how it is called or where it is described?</p>
<p>The measure itself is the following:
Let $A$ & $B$ -- two sets of values from a single space (real line for example)
Let:</p>
<p>$d(A, B) = \sum_{a \in A} \sum_{b \in B} \frac{dist(a, b)}{len(A) * len(B)}$</p>
<ul>
<li>$dist(a, b)$ is the distance between
two values</li>
<li>$len(A)$ is the number of
the elements in $A$</li>
</ul>
<p>So, the measure itself is:</p>
<p>$|| A, B || = \frac{d^2(A, B)}{|d(A, A) d(B, B)|} - 1$</p>
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/58301/how-the-distance-between-sets-is-called/58309#58309Answer by noppoli for How the distance between sets is called?noppoli2011-03-13T02:46:06Z2011-03-13T02:46:06Z<p>This seems related to cluster analysis, and your d(A, B) is used in "average linkage clustering."
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis</a></p>