# How to get a distance matrix using "SVRspell"?

I am trying to compute a distance matrix using the method "SVRspell" (seqdistOO function).

I want to use an exponential weight of spell length equal to 2 and I want to discard matching sub-sequences of length one. No states' similarity matrix.

Note: sequences in the 'seqs' object below have a length of 25 (ages 15 to 39) and the alphabet has 20 states (marital status plus children ever born).

So, I run this

>svr<-seqdistOO(seqs, method="SVRspell", tpow=2, kweights=sqrt(c(0,2:25))) [>] 6315 sequences with 20 distinct events/states [>] 5023 distinct sequences [>] min/max sequence length: 1/11 [>] computing distances using NMSMST metric [>] total time: 30.41 secs

I do not understand why it seems to be using a NMSMST metric instead of the SVRspell with the specified parameters. In my understanding SVRspell is not equivalent to NMSMST

Am I coding something wrong? or is it because SVRspell pertains to the 'family' of NMS metrics?

Thanks,

Andres

• You might be better on a site specific to your software unless you want to separate out the statistical part from the programming part. Mar 7 '17 at 18:30

Your code is correct and the "... using NMSMST" message is just a display bug.
Actually, the NMS, NMSMST, and SVRspell methods proposed by the package seqdist2, all use a same algorithm. The difference is controlled by a few internal parameters.
• Package seqdist2 is now obsolete. Its content (with many improvements) has been made directly available in TraMineR since v 2.0-5. See the documentation page of the seqdist and seqcost functions. Aug 24 '17 at 11:32