WKNN-class: Wrapper classes for k-NN searches enabling repeated queries...

Description Details Performance See Also Examples

Description

WKNNF and WKNND are reference classes that wrap C++ classes of the same name that include a space-efficient k-d tree along with the target data points. They have query methods with exactly the same interface as the knn function. One important point compared with knn - they must be intialised with floating point data and you are responsible for this - see storage.mode) and the example below.

Details

WKNNF expects and returns matrices in R's standard (double, 8 bytes) data type but uses floats internally. WKNND uses doubles throughout. When retaining large numbers of points, the WKNNF objects will have a small memory saving, especially if tree building is delayed.

The constructor for WKNN objects includes a logical flag indicating whether to build the tree immediately (default: TRUE) or (when FALSE) to delay building the tree until a query is made (this happens automatically when required).

Performance

The use of WKNN objects will incur a performance penalty for single queries of trees with < ~1000 data points. This is because of the overhead associated with the R wrapper class. It therefore makes sense to use knn in these circumstances.

If you wish to make repeated queries of the same target data, then using WKNN objects can give significant advantages. If you are going to make repeated queries with the same set of query points (presumably against different target data), you can obtain benefits in some cases by converting the query points into WKNNF objects without building the trees.

See Also

knn

Examples

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## Basic usage
# load sample data consisting of list of 3 separate 3d pointets
data(kcpoints)
# build a tree and query it with two different sets of points
w1 <- WKNNF(kcpoints[[1]])
w1q2 <- w1$query(kcpoints[[2]], k=5, eps=0, radius=0)
str(w1q2)
w1q3 <- w1$query(kcpoints[[3]], k=5, eps=0, radius=0)
# note that there will be small difference between WKNNF and knn due to loss 
# of precision in the double to float conversion when a WKNNF tree is 
# built and queried.
stopifnot(all.equal(
 knn(data=kcpoints[[1]], query=kcpoints[[2]], k=5, eps=0, radius=0),
 w1q2, tolerance=1e-6))
 
## storage mode: must be double
m=matrix(1:24, ncol=3)
storage.mode(m)
# this will generate an error unless we change to a double
w=tools::assertCondition(WKNND(m), "error")
storage.mode(m)="double"
w=WKNND(matrix(m, ncol=3))

## construct wrapper objects but delay tree construction
w1 <- WKNNF(kcpoints[[1]], FALSE)
# query triggers tree construction
w1q2 <- w1$query(kcpoints[[2]], k=5, eps=0, radius=0)
str(w1q2)

## queries using wrapper objects
wkcpoints <-lapply(kcpoints, WKNNF, FALSE)
# query all 3 point sets against first
# this will trigger tree construction only for pointset 1
qall <- lapply(wkcpoints, 
  function(x) wkcpoints[[1]]$queryWKNN(x$.CppObject, k=5, eps=0, radius=0))
str(qall)

jefferis/nabor documentation built on Aug. 6, 2021, 12:15 p.m.