Geometric comparison of popular mixture-model distances.

Conference · Wed Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2010

OSTI ID:1027001

Mitchell, Scott A

Statistical Latent Dirichlet Analysis produces mixture model data that are geometrically equivalent to points lying on a regular simplex in moderate to high dimensions. Numerous other statistical models and techniques also produce data in this geometric category, even though the meaning of the axes and coordinate values differs significantly. A distance function is used to further analyze these points, for example to cluster them. Several different distance functions are popular amongst statisticians; which distance function is chosen is usually driven by the historical preference of the application domain, information-theoretic considerations, or by the desirability of the clustering results. Relatively little consideration is usually given to how distance functions geometrically transform data, or the distances algebraic properties. Here we take a look at these issues, in the hope of providing complementary insight and inspiring further geometric thought. Several popular distances, {chi}{sup 2}, Jensen - Shannon divergence, and the square of the Hellinger distance, are shown to be nearly equivalent; in terms of functional forms after transformations, factorizations, and series expansions; and in terms of the shape and proximity of constant-value contours. This is somewhat surprising given that their original functional forms look quite different. Cosine similarity is the square of the Euclidean distance, and a similar geometric relationship is shown with Hellinger and another cosine. We suggest a geodesic variation of Hellinger. The square-root projection that arises in Hellinger distance is briefly compared to standard normalization for Euclidean distance. We include detailed derivations of some ratio and difference bounds for illustrative purposes. We provide some constructions that nearly achieve the worst-case ratios, relevant for contours.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1027001
• Report Number(s): SAND2010-6286C
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
DIMENSIONS
FUNCTIONALS
GEODESICS
MIXTURES
SERIES EXPANSION
SHAPE
STATISTICAL MODELS
TRANSFORMATIONS