How to Calculate Minkowski Distance in R

To calculate minkowski distance in R, you can use dist() function along with method argument. Minkowski distance is a generalized metric that includes Euclidean distance (p = 2) and Manhattan distance (p = 1) as special cases.

The following method shows how you can do it with syntax.

Method: Use dist() Function

dist(matrix, method="minkowski", p)

The following example shows how to use dist() function in R.

Use dist() Function to Calculate Minkowski Distance

Let’s see how we can calculate minkowski distance between matrices using dist() function.

# Declare vector
x <- c(7,8,9,4)

y <- c(5,8,9,7)

z <- c(5,7,1,2)

# Combine vector to create matrix
mat <- rbind(x,y,z)

# Calculate Minkowski distance
d <- dist(mat, method="minkowski", p=3)

# Show distance
print(d)

Output:

    x        y
y 3.271066         
z 8.087579 8.608753

Here the output shows minkowski distance for matrices using dist() function.