In k-means or kNN, we use euclidean distance to calculate the distance between nearest neighbours. Why not manhattan distance ?
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
1
No, KNN is generic and you can use any valid metric you want. For example, cosine distance is another metric that is used frequently. Here is an implementation in scikit-learn where you can choose among several distance options. You can also define your own metric to use.
K-means is slightly different. It really uses Euclidean distance, and it becomes a harder problem for generic metrics. However, k-medians is a variation of k-means with L1 distance. it has variations such as k-medians (using L1 distance). k-medoids is another generalization of this algorithm where the cluster center is chosen among the data points and you can use any metric with it.
-
$\begingroup$ There is also the spherical k-means, based on cosine distance $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 3 at 14:52