[R] cauculating dissimilarities in R

virgin
Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:40:42 -0000

Dear All,
I?ve got a statistical question on calculating
dissimilarities in R.
I want to calculate the different types of dissimilarities
on the ?flower? dataset found in the package
?cluster?. Flower is a data frame with 18 observations
on 8 variables. Variable 1 and 2 are binary, variable 3 is
asymmetric binary, variable 4 is nominal, variable 5 and 6
are ordered and variable 7 and 8 are interval scaled.

Commands to load the dataset in R.
library(cluster)
data(flower)
flower


What are the different types of dissimilarities that can be
calculated on such a dataset?
Do I need to group the types of variables first i.e. all
binary together then run the calculation?  Do I use
dissimilarity indices such as Jaccard or should it be
classification function such as ?daisy? which should be
used?

Many thanks,

Elvina Payet (MSc)
University of La Reunion