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CS822
Data
Mining
Instructor: Dr. Muhammad Tahir

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Measuring Data Similarity and
Dissimilarity

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Measuring Data Similarity and
Dissimilarity

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Similarity
• A numerical measure that indicates how alike two data
objects are.
• Often between 0 and 1, where 1 means identical and
0 means completely different.
• Example:
• Suppose we compare two text documents based on word
usage.
• Doc1: "Artificial intelligence is transforming industries."
• Doc2: "Industries are being transformed by artificial intelligence."
• Using cosine similarity, their similarity score might be
close to 1 because they contain the same words in a
different order. 5
Dissimilarity
• A numerical measure that indicates how different two
data objects are.
• The minimum dissimilarity is often 0 (identical objects),
but the upper limit varies depending on the method.
• Example:
• In a customer segmentation task, we compare two
customers based on their age:
• Customer A: Age 25
• Customer B: Age 50
• Using Euclidean distance, the dissimilarity is |50 - 25| =
25, meaning they are quite different in terms of age.
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Dissimilarity …
Euclidean Distance (No Fixed Upper Limit)
• The straight-line distance between two points in a multi-
dimensional space.
• Example:
• Consider two points in a 2D space:
• A (2, 3)
• B (10, 15)
• Euclidean distance =
• Upper limit: No fixed value—it depends on the scale of the
data. In another dataset, distances might be in the hundreds
or thousands.
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Dissimilarity …
Manhattan Distance (Upper Limit Depends on Data
Range)
• Measures the sum of absolute differences between
coordinates.
• Example:
• A (2,3) and B (10,15)

• Upper limit: Can be very high if data values are large (e.g.,
city distances in kilometers).

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Dissimilarity …
Jaccard Distance (Fixed Upper Limit = 1)
• Used for comparing binary or set-based data. It is calculated as:

• Example:
• Set A = {apple, banana, mango}
• Set B = {banana, mango, orange}
• Intersection = {banana, mango} (2 elements)
• Union = {apple, banana, mango, orange} (4 elements)
• Jaccard Similarity = 2/4 = 0.5
• Jaccard Distance = 1 - 0.5 = 0.5
• Upper limit: Always 1, because the maximum possible difference is total
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dissimilarity (no overlap)
Proximity
• A general term that can refer to either
similarity or dissimilarity between data
objects.
• Example:
• In a recommendation system (e.g., Netflix,
Spotify), proximity between users is measured to
suggest similar content:
• If User A and User B both watch sci-fi movies, their
proximity score is high, so they get similar movie
recommendations.

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Data Matrix and Dissimilarity Matrix

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 Data Matrix
•A data matrix is a structured Obje Height Weight Age
table where: ct (cm) (kg) (years)
• rows represent objects
(instances) and A 170 65 25

• columns represent B 160 55 30

features (attributes).
C 175 70 28

Example of a Data Matrix

Each row = an entity (e.g., a person).
Each column = an attribute (e.g., height, weight,
age).
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 Dissimilarity
Matrix A B C
•A dissimilarity matrix shows how
different (or distant) each object is A 0 10 8
from the others.
•Instead of raw data, it contains B 10 0 5
distance values (e.g., Euclidean,
Manhattan, Jaccard). C 8 5 0
•It is often symmetric (distance
between A and B is the same as B
to A). Example of a Dissimilarity Matrix (Using
Euclidean Distance)
•Diagonal values (self-
A to B = 10 → They are more
comparison) are usually 0 (object is different.
identical to itself).
B to C = 5 → They are more similar.
C to A = 8 → Moderate difference.
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Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes

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Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes
• Proximity measures (similarity and dissimilarity) for
nominal attributes are used when dealing with
categorical data, where values represent distinct
categories with no inherent numerical ordering.

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Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes
Understanding Nominal Attributes

• Nominal attributes are qualitative and describe

different categories or labels. Examples include:
• Colors: {Red, Blue, Green}
• Car Brands: {Toyota, Ford, Honda}
• Job Titles: {Engineer, Doctor, Teacher}
• Since these values do not have a numeric meaning,
we use specific techniques to measure proximity
(similarity/dissimilarity).
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Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes
Dissimilarity Measure for Perso Car Eye
Job Title
Nominal Attributes n Brand Color

A Toyota Brown Engineer

The simplest method is Simple
Matching Coefficient (SMC): B Honda Brown Teacher
​
Example (Comparing two people based on their
attributes)

Total attributes = 3
Mismatches = 2 (Car Brand and Job Title are
different)
Dissimilarity = = 0.6732​=0.67 (higher value =
more dissimilar)
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 Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes

Similarity Measure for

Perso Car Eye Job
Nominal Attributes n Brand Color Title

Enginee
Simple Matching Similarity A Toyota Brown
r
(SMC):
B Honda Brown Teacher
Example:
•Matches = 1 (Eye Color is the same)
•Similarity = = 0.33 (lower value = less
similar)

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 Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes

Jaccard Similarity for Binary Likes

Nominal Data Likes Likes
User Samsun
Apple Sony
If nominal attributes are binary (Yes/No, 1/0), g
Jaccard Similarity is often used:
A 1 1 0

B 1 0 1
In the Jaccard Similarity measure, 1-1 matches
and 0-0 matches refer to how binary (yes/no, 1-1 Matches = 1 (Both users like the same
1/0) attributes align between two objects. product: Likes Apple)
• 1-1 Match: Both objects have the same 0-0 Matches = 0 (Both users dislike the same
attribute as "1" (yes, true, present, etc.). product)
• 0-0 Match: Both objects have the same Total Attributes - 0-0 Matches = 3
attribute as "0" (no, false, absent, etc.). Jaccard Similarity = =0.3331​=0.33
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Proximity Measure for Nominal
Attributes
• A contingency table is a table that summarizes the
frequency of different combinations of two
categorical (or binary) variables.
• It helps in analyzing the relationship between two
variables.
• It allows us to compare two objects or variables.
• It helps in calculating similarity and dissimilarity.
• Used in data mining, statistics, and machine learning
to measure how similar or different two entities are.

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 Contingency Table for Binary Data

• A contingency table for binary

data (data with only 1s (Yes) and Object j → 1 0 Total
0s (No)) looks like this:
• What do these values mean?
Object i
• q → Both objects are 1 (Yes, q r q+r
=1
Yes)
• r → Object i is 1, but j is 0 (Yes, Object i
s t s+t
No) =0
• s → Object i is 0, but j is 1 (No,
Yes) q+ r+ p (total
Total s t data)
• t → Both objects are 0 (No, No)

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 Example: Sports Preferences of
Alice & Bob
Alice Bob
Imagine Alice and Bob are being compared based on
whether they like certain sports (Yes = 1, No = 0) Sport (i) (j)
Football 1 1
In the contingency table:
Cricket 1 0
q = 1 (Football)
Tennis 0 0
Contingency Table for Alice & Bob
r = 1 (Cricket)
Object j (Bob) Object j (Bob)
Total
s = 0 (No case where Bob likes but Alice =1 =0
doesn’t)
Object i q=1 q+r
r = 1 (Cricket)
(Alice) = 1 (Football) =2
t = 1 (Tennis)
Object i s+t=
s=0 t = 1 (Tennis)
(Alice) = 0 1
Now, let's use this table to understand similarity and
dissimilarity measures. Total q+s=1 r+t=2 p=3
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Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Binary
Distance
• When comparing two objects based on binary (Yes/No or
1/0) attributes, we use different distance measures
depending on whether both 1s and 0s matter
equally or not.

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Symmetric Binary Distance
• This considers both agreements (1-1) and disagreements (1-0 or 0-1)
equally.
• It is useful when both presence and absence of an attribute are meaningful.
• Example: Comparing disease symptoms in two patients (having or not having a
symptom matters equally).
Formula:
​where:
• q = both are 1 (1-1 match)
• r = Alice is 1, Bob is 0 (1-0 mismatch)
• s = Alice is 0, Bob is 1 (0-1 mismatch)
• t = both are 0 (0-0 match)
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Asymmetric Binary Distance
• Here, 0-0 matches (both saying "No") are ignored
because only the presence of an attribute matters.
• Used when only positive occurrences (1s) are
meaningful and 0s are unimportant.
• Example: Diagnosing rare diseases (if both don’t
have the disease, it doesn’t matter, but if one does and
the other doesn’t, it does).
Formula:

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Jaccard Similarity
• Jaccard Similarity is a measure of how similar two binary objects are,
considering only the presence (1s) of attributes and
ignoring 0s.

• q = Both objects have 1 (1-1 match)

• r = Object i has 1, but object j has 0 (1-0 mismatch)
• s = Object i has 0, but object j has 1 (0-1 mismatch)
• t (0-0 matches are ignored in Jaccard similarity)

Jaccard is useful when only the presence of attributes

matters, such as in:
• Text analysis (words present in two documents)
• Market basket analysis (common items in shopping carts)
• Genetic similarity (shared mutations between species) 26
 Example: Sports Preferences of
Alice & Bob
•Example: Sports Preferences of Alice Alice Bob
& Bob Sport (i) (j)
Football 1 1
•Symmetric Binary Distance Calculation: Cricket 1 0
Tennis 0 0
From the contingency table:
•Asymmetric Binary Distance Calculation:
Bob (j) = Tota
Bob (j) = 1
0 l
•Jaccard Similarity:
Alice (i) q=1 r=1
2
=1 (Football) (Cricket)
(50% similarity based on shared
Alice (i) t=1
preferences) s=0 1
=0 (Tennis)
Total 1 2 27 3
Standardizing Numeric Data with Z-
score

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Standardizing Numeric Data with Z-
score
What is Standardization?
• Standardization is a technique used to transform
numerical data so that different features have a
common scale. This is crucial when:
• Data has different units (e.g., height in cm vs. weight in kg).
• Features have different ranges (e.g., one feature ranges from
1–1000, another from 0–1).
• Machine learning models are sensitive to magnitudes (e.g.,
distance-based algorithms like k-NN, K-means).

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Standardizing Numeric Data with Z-
score
What is Z-score Standardization?
Z-score standardization transforms data to have:
• Mean (μ) = 0
• Standard deviation (σ) = 1
Formula for Z-score:
• X = Original value
• μ = Mean of the dataset
• σ = Standard deviation of the dataset
• This means each value is now represented in terms of how
many standard deviations it is away from the mean.
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 Stude Score
Example: Standardizing Exam nt (X)
A 80
Scores
•Raw Data (Math Exam Scores of 5 Students): B 60
•Step 1: Compute Mean (μ):
C 75
•Step 2: Compute Standard Deviation (σ):
D 90
•Step 3: Compute Z-score for Each Student
E 85

Stude Score
Z-score
nt (X)
A 80

Interpretation of Z-scores B 60
• Positive Z-score (Z > 0) → Value is
above the mean (e.g., Student D got
C 75
1.17 standard deviations above the
mean).
• Negative Z-score (Z < 0) → Value is D 90

below the mean (e.g., Student B got -

1.75, meaning much lower than the E 85
mean). 31
Commonly Used Distance Measures/Metrics
• Euclidean distance measures the straight-line
distance between two points in a multi-dimensional
space
• Manhattan distance is useful when the
dimensions in the data have different units of
measurement
• Chebyshev distance is ideal for applications where
the maximum difference between two dimensions is
more important than the individual differences.
• Mahalanobis distance takes into account the
covariance between variables. This is especially
useful in applications where the dimensions are
correlated
• Hamming distance is used to measure the
difference between two strings of equal length.
• The Haversine distance is used to calculate the
distance between two points on a sphere
• Cosine distance is a measure of similarity between
two non-zero vectors of an inner product space
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Commonly Used Distance
Measures/Metrics
• Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each
distance metric is crucial in selecting the appropriate
metric for a given problem.
• By choosing the right distance metric, we can improve
the accuracy and efficiency of our machine learning
models.

May be included in the exam

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Minkowski Distance
• Minkowski distance is a generalized distance metric
that includes Euclidean and Manhattan distances as
special cases. It is defined as:

• and are two points in n-dimensional space.

• is the order of the Minkowski distance.
• is the absolute difference between the coordinates of
the two points.
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Special Cases of Minkowski Distance
• Minkowski Distance varies depending on the value
of :
Manhattan Distance (p = 1) (city block, L1 norm)

• Interpretation: The sum of absolute differences

between coordinates
• Use case: When movement is restricted to grid-based
paths (like city blocks).
• Example: Points: A(1, 2) and B(4, 6)
• Distance = 35
Special Cases of Minkowski Distance
• Euclidean Distance (p = 2) (L2 norm)

• Interpretation: The straight-line distance between two

points.
• Use case: When a direct path is possible.
• Example: Points: A(1, 2) and B(4, 6)
• Distance =

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Special Cases of Minkowski Distance
• Chebyshev Distance (p → ∞) (“supremum” (Lmax
norm, L norm))

• Interpretation: The maximum absolute difference

along any dimension.
• Use case: When diagonal moves are allowed and have
the same cost as horizontal/vertical moves.
• Example: Points: A(1, 2) and B(4, 6)
• Distance =
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Special Cases of Minkowski Distance
• Minkowski Distance generalizes multiple
distance metrics.
• Choice of affects the result:
• (City block movement)
• (Straight-line movement)
• (Max absolute difference)

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Properties of Minkowski Distance
• Positive Definiteness
• Distance is always positive:
• Distance is zero only when the points are the same:
• Symmetry
• Distance is the same in both directions:
• Triangle Inequality
• The direct distance between two points is always less than or
equal to the sum of the distances via a third point:
• Example: If going from A to C directly is 5 units, but going A →
B → C is 6 units, then direct travel is the shortest path.

Since Minkowski Distance satisfies these three conditions, it is 39

considered a valid distance metric.
Ordinal Variables

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Ordinal Variables
• Ordinal data is a type of categorical data where values are ranked or
ordered, but the differences between them are not necessarily equal.
• Unlike numerical data, you cannot perform meaningful arithmetic operations like
addition or subtraction.
Examples of Ordinal Data
1.Movie Ratings (e.g., 1 star, 2 stars, ..., 5 stars)
2.Education Level (e.g., High School < Bachelor's < Master's < PhD)
3.Customer Satisfaction (e.g., Very Dissatisfied < Dissatisfied < Neutral < Satisfied <
Very Satisfied)
4.Pain Level in Medical Surveys (e.g., No Pain < Mild Pain < Moderate Pain < Severe
Pain)
• Even though these values have an order, the difference between "Satisfied" and
"Very Satisfied" is not necessarily the same as between "Neutral" and "Satisfied."
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 Cosine Similarity with Ordinal Data:
Example
•Scenario: Movie Ratings User A User B
•Two users (A & B) rate three movies on a scale of 1 Rating Rating
to 5 (where 1 = worst, 5 = best). Movie s s
•Step 1: Compute the Dot Product
Movie
5 4
1
•Step 2: Compute Euclidean Norms
Movie
• For User A: 3 2
• For User B: •
2Cosine similarity = 0.97 → Very high
• Step 3: Compute Cosine Similarity similarity between User A and User B's
Movie
ratings.
4 closer to 0,5it would
• If the similarity were
3mean their ratings are quite different.
• If it were negative, it would mean they
have opposite preferences. 42
 Cosine Similarity
• A document can be represented by thousands of attributes, each
recording the frequency of a particular word (such as keywords) or phrase
in the document.

• Other vector objects: gene features in micro-arrays, …

• Applications: information retrieval, biologic taxonomy, gene feature mapping, ...

• Cosine measure: If d1 and d2 are two vectors (e.g., term-frequency vectors), then

cos(d1, d2) = (d1  d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,

where  indicates vector dot product, ||d||: the length of vector d 43
 Example: Cosine Similarity
• cos(d1, d2) = (d1  d2) /||d1|| ||d2|| ,
where  indicates vector dot product, ||d|: the length of vector d

• Ex: Find the similarity between documents 1 and 2.

d1 = (5, 0, 3, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0)
d2 = (3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1)

d1d2 = 5*3+0*0+3*2+0*0+2*1+0*1+0*1+2*1+0*0+0*1 = 25
||d1||= (5*5+0*0+3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0+2*2+0*0+0*0)0.5=(42)0.5 =
6.481
||d2||= (3*3+0*0+2*2+0*0+1*1+1*1+0*0+1*1+0*0+1*1)0.5=(17)0.5 =
4.12
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cos(d , d ) = 0.94
You are welcome

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