MATLAB pdist function

Question

Hi,

I am using the pdist command to find the distance between x and y coordinates stored in a matrix.

X = [100 100;
      0  100;
     100  0;
     500 400;
     300 600;];

D = pdist(X,'euclidean')

Which returns a 15 element vector. :

[0.734979755525412 3.40039811339820 2.93175207511321   1.83879677592575 2.40127440268306 2.75251513299386 2.21488402640753 1.10610649500317 1.81674017301699 0.903207751535635 1.99116952754924 1.05069952386082 1.24122819418333 1.08583377275532 1.38729428638035]

Is there a way to associate these distances with the coordinates they were derived from, i.e. store them in a matrix with the general row form:

[Length xcoordinate1 ycoordinate1 xcoordinate2 ycoordinate2]

Where there is a row for each length found?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

%# define X, D
X = [100 100;
      0  100;
     100  0;
     500 400;
     300 600;];

D = pdist(X,'euclidean');

%# find the indices corresponding to each distance
tmp = ones(size(X,1));
tmp = tril(tmp,-1); %# creates a matrix that has 1's below the diagonal

%# get the indices of the 1's
[rowIdx,colIdx ] = find(tmp);

%# create the output
out = [D',X(rowIdx,:),X(colIdx,:)];

Answer 2

You can use the function NCHOOSEK to generate a set of indices into X and build your matrix in the following way:

>> X = [100 100; 0 100; 100 0; 500 400; 300 600];  %# Your sample data
>> D = pdist(X,'euclidean')'  %'# Euclidean distance, with result transposed

D =

  100.0000    %# Note that I get different results than your example!
  100.0000
  500.0000
  538.5165
  141.4214
  583.0952
  583.0952
  565.6854
  632.4555
  282.8427

>> index = nchoosek(1:size(X,1),size(X,2));
>> M = [D X(index(:,1),:) X(index(:,2),:)]    %# [Distance X1 Y1 X2 Y2]

M =

  100.0000  100.0000  100.0000         0  100.0000
  100.0000  100.0000  100.0000  100.0000         0
  500.0000  100.0000  100.0000  500.0000  400.0000
  538.5165  100.0000  100.0000  300.0000  600.0000
  141.4214         0  100.0000  100.0000         0
  583.0952         0  100.0000  500.0000  400.0000
  583.0952         0  100.0000  300.0000  600.0000
  565.6854  100.0000         0  500.0000  400.0000
  632.4555  100.0000         0  300.0000  600.0000
  282.8427  500.0000  400.0000  300.0000  600.0000

Note that the function NCHOOSEK will only be a practical solution if the number of columns in X is less than around 15.