How to Calculate Euclidean Distance in R

To calculate Euclidean distance in R, you can declare a function manually. Euclidean distance is a measure of the true straight line distance between two points in Euclidean space.

In this article, we will explore how to calculate Euclidean distance in R with examples.

Method: Declare Function

You can declare a function to calculate Euclidean distance between two vectors. Here’s the syntax:

euclidean <- function(x1, x2) {
  sqrt(sum((x1 - x2)^2))
}

The following example shows how to calculate Euclidean distance in R.

Calculate Euclidean Distance

Let’s see how to calculate Euclidean distance between two vectors in R:

# Declare euclidean function
euclidean <- function(x1, x2) {
  sqrt(sum((x1 - x2)^2))
}

# Declare vectors
a <- c(78, 85, 89, 96, 74, 75)
b <- c(65, 66, 64, 69, 70, 61)

# Calculate Euclidean distance
d <- euclidean(a, b)

# Show Euclidean distance
print(d)

Output: 👇️

[1] 45.78209

In this example, the euclidean function calculates the Euclidean distance between vectors a and b. The output shows the distance between the two vectors.