Variation of Information¶
Variation of information (also known as shared information distance) is a measure of the distance between two clusterings. It is devised based on mutual information, but it is a true metric, i.e. it satisfies symmetry and triangle inequality.
References:
Meila, Marina (2003). Comparing Clusterings by the Variation of Information. Learning Theory and Kernel Machines: 173–187.
This package provides the varinfo
function that implements this metric:
-
varinfo
(k1, a1, k2, a2)¶ Compute the variation of information between two assignments.
Parameters: - k1 – The number of clusters in the first clustering.
- a1 – The assignment vector for the first clustering.
- k2 – The number of clusters in the second clustering.
- a2 – The assignment vector for the second clustering.
Returns: the value of variation of information.
-
varinfo
(R, k0, a0) This method takes
R
, an instance ofClusteringResult
, as input, and computes the variation of information between its corresponding clustering with one given by(k0, a0)
, wherek0
is the number of clusters in the other clustering, whilea0
is the corresponding assignment vector.
-
varinfo
(R1, R2) This method takes
R1
andR2
(both are instances ofClusteringResult
) and computes the variation of information between them.