create_dist: Create a Distance Function Object

In bbuchsbaum/rMVPA: Multivoxel Pattern Analysis in R

Create a Distance Function Object

Description

Constructs a generic distance function object, storing:

• name: The name (method) of the distance (e.g., "euclidean", "cordist", "mahalanobis").

• labels: (Optional) a vector of labels associated with the data rows.

• ...: Additional parameters relevant to the specific distance method (e.g., correlation method for cordist, number of components for pcadist, etc.).

Usage

create_dist(name, labels = NULL, ...)

Arguments

name	A character string specifying the distance method (e.g., "euclidean", "cordist").
labels	A vector of row labels (optional), primarily for informational/reference purposes.
...	Additional parameters for the distance method (e.g. 'method="pearson"' for correlation, or whiten=TRUE for PCA-based distances).

Details

This object is used by pairwise_dist() to compute an N x N matrix of pairwise distances between rows of a data matrix.

The distance function object itself does not exclude same-block comparisons or reorder rows by label. Those tasks (if needed) are handled downstream (for example, in second_order_similarity).

Value

An S3 object with class c(name, "distfun") that can be passed to pairwise_dist().

Examples

# Create a Euclidean distance function object
dist_obj_euc <- create_dist("euclidean")

# Create a correlation distance function object with a specified correlation method
dist_obj_cor <- create_dist("cordist", method="spearman")

bbuchsbaum/rMVPA documentation built on June 10, 2025, 8:23 p.m.