Special Properties
For a fixed length n, the Hamming distance is a metric on the vector space of the words of length n, as it obviously fulfills the conditions of non-negativity, identity of indiscernibles and symmetry, and it can be shown easily by complete induction that it satisfies the triangle inequality as well. The Hamming distance between two words a and b can also be seen as the Hamming weight of a−b for an appropriate choice of the − operator.
For binary strings a and b the Hamming distance is equal to the number of ones (population count) in a XOR b. The metric space of length-n binary strings, with the Hamming distance, is known as the Hamming cube; it is equivalent as a metric space to the set of distances between vertices in a hypercube graph. One can also view a binary string of length n as a vector in by treating each symbol in the string as a real coordinate; with this embedding, the strings form the vertices of an n-dimensional hypercube, and the Hamming distance of the strings is equivalent to the Manhattan distance between the vertices.
Read more about this topic: Hamming Distance
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or properties:
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“A drop of water has the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a concert, as well as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)