I would not support an extension of kmeans to do this. I think it is best left simple and fast as it now is.
I can think of three ways you might handle your problem 1. Use, for example, pam() in the cluster package, which does a similar job to kmeans (not quite the same, of course) with a general distance measure. 2. If you are working with a non-standard metric and you really want to use the k-means algorithm, then perhaps one way to do so is to use an approximate euclidean coordinatisatin for the points with a multidimensional scaling first and then use kmeans. (e.g. cmdscale, isoMDS, sammon, ...) I've no idea what the traps are with this approach, but it seems kind of feasible. 3. If the algorithms are there and available as you say, write the code yourself and contribute it to the R-project as a simple package. Everyone will benefit. Bill Venables CSIRO Laboratories PO Box 120, Cleveland, 4163 AUSTRALIA Office Phone (email preferred): +61 7 3826 7251 Fax (if absolutely necessary): +61 7 3826 7304 Mobile: +61 4 8819 4402 Home Phone: +61 7 3286 7700 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 13 May 2008 3:25 AM To: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: [Rd] k means Hi the devel list, I am using K means with a non standard distance. As far as I see, the function kmeans is able to deal with 4 differents algorithm, but not with a user define distance. In addition, kmeans is not able to deal with missing value whereas there is several solution that k-means can use to deal with them ; one is using a distance that takes the missing value in account, like a distance with Gower adjustement (which is the regular distance dist() used in R). So is it possible to adapt kmeans to let the user gives an argument 'distance to use'? Christophe ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
