Hi I am new to apache mahout and would like to contribute in whatever humble way I can.
I see that the Vector class in Apache Mahout does not have the functionality of minkowski distance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_distance is a distance metric which generalizes distance measures between any two vectors. It can represent hamming distance, euclidean distance depending on parameters. I already have a simple solution ready for review if this is approved. Similarly I am working on the more generic Mahalobnis distance measure. My primary motive for introducing these distance measures is to come up with a generic implementation of the K-nearest neighbor classifier (not to be confused K-means clustering). I will be working on that as well shortly. If somebody else is working towards these features, I would like to collaborate and donate whatever code patches that they deem necessary. If not, I humbly request that the community approve these for inclusion into apache mahout. Yours sincerely Arunav Sanyal -- Arunav Sanyal Graduate student B.E (Hons) Computer Science BITS Pilani K.K Birla Goa Campus Software Engineer INFORMATICA BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
