mahal - Mahalanobis distance

Syntax

Description

d = mahal(Y,X) computes the Mahalanobis distance (in squared units) of each observation in Y from the reference sample in matrix X. If Y is n-by-m, where n is the number of observations and m is the dimension of the data, d is n-by-1. X and Y must have the same number of columns, but can have different numbers of rows. X must have more rows than columns.

For observation I, the Mahalanobis distance is defined by d(I) = (Y(I,:)-mu)*inv(SIGMA)*(Y(I,:)-mu)', where mu and SIGMA are the sample mean and covariance of the data in X. mahal performs an equivalent, but more efficient, computation.

Examples

Generate some correlated bivariate data in X and compare the Mahalanobis and squared Euclidean distances of observations in Y:

X = mvnrnd([0;0],[1 .9;.9 1],100);
Y = [1 1;1 -1;-1 1;-1 -1];

d1 = mahal(Y,X) % Mahalanobis
d1 =
    1.3592
   21.1013
   23.8086
    1.4727

d2 = sum((Y-repmat(mean(X),4,1)).^2, 2) % Squared Euclidean
d2 =
    1.9310
    1.8821
    2.1228
    2.0739

scatter(X(:,1),X(:,2))
hold on
scatter(Y(:,1),Y(:,2),100,d1,'*','LineWidth',2)
hb = colorbar;
ylabel(hb,'Mahalanobis Distance')
legend('X','Y','Location','NW')

The observations in Y with equal coordinate values are much closer to X in Mahalanobis distance than observations with opposite coordinate values, even though all observations are approximately equidistant from the mean of X in Euclidean distance. The Mahalanobis distance, by considering the covariance of the data and the scales of the different variables, is useful for detecting outliers in such cases.

See Also

mahal | pdist

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