It's interesting how even though there are a zillion ways to assess the similarity between two vectors (each representing a single-dimensional data sample) when it comes to doing the same thing with matrices (each representing a whole sample of data) the metrics available are mediocre at best. It's really strange that when it comes to clustering, for example, where this is an important part of the whole process, we often revert to crude metrics like Silhouette Width to figure out if the clusters are similar enough or not. What if there was a way to assess similarity more scientifically, beyond such amateur heuristics? Well, fortunately, there is a way, at least as of late. Enter the Congruency concept. This is basically the idea that you can explore the similarity of two n-dimensional samples through the systematic analysis of their components, given that the latter are orthogonal. If they are not orthogonal, it shouldn't be difficult to make them orthogonal, without any loss of information. Whatever the case, it's important to avoid any strong relationships among the variables involved as this can skew the whole process of assessing similarity. The Congruency concept is something I came up with a few months ago but it wasn't until recently that I managed to implement it in a reliable and scalable way, using a new framework I've developed in Julia. The metric takes as inputs the two matrices and yields a float number as its output, between 0 and 1. The larger this number is the more similar (congruent) the two matrices are. Naturally, the metric was designed to be robust regardless of its dimensionality, though if there are a lot of noisy variables, they are bound to distort the result. That's why it performs some preprocessing first to ensure that the variables are independent and as useful as possible. Applications of the Congruency metric (which I coined as dcon) go beyond clustering, however. Namely, it can be used in assessing sampling algorithms too (usually yielding values 0.95+ for a reliable sample) as well as synthetic data generation. Since the metric doesn't make any assumptions about the data, it can be used with all kinds of data, not just those following a particular set of distributions. Also, as it doesn't make use of all dimensions simultaneously, it is possible to avoid the curse of dimensionality altogether. Things like Congruency may seem like ambitious heuristics and few people would trust it when the more established statistical heuristics exist as an option. However, there comes a time when a data scientist starts to question whether a statistic's / metric's age is sufficient for establishing its usefulness. After all, what is now old and established was once new and experimental, let's not forget that...
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Zacharias Voulgaris, PhDPassionate data scientist with a foxy approach to technology, particularly related to A.I. Archives
December 2022
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