Distances derived from comparisons of pairs

Suppose we have a set of n items which are to be compared two-by-two according to the presence or absence of p characteristics. The similarity between any pair i, i can be defined, for example, by means of Gower s similarity index [46] which was defined in Chapter 30. 

Gower recommends to transform the similarities S into distances D by means of  

There are many alternative indices of similarity, but Gower s is considered to be fairly general and can be related to several other similarity indices [47]. 

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