hamming {abdiv}

Hamming distance

Description

The Hamming distance is the number of positions where the values are different.

Usage

hamming(x, y)

Arguments

x, y

Numeric vectors.

Details

For vectors x and y, the Hamming distance is defined as

d(x, y) = \sum_i [x_i \neq y_i],

where the quantity in the brackets is 1 if the elements are not equal, and zero if the elements are equal. Relation to other definitions:

• The hamming() function in scipy.spatial.distance divides the result by the vector length. Our function is equivalent to the SciPy version multiplied by the vector length.

• Equivalent to the hamming calculator in Mothur for presence/absence vectors.

Value

The Hamming distance between x and y.