Is this true?: “If the distance between two items is high but it is in the direction of low variance then they are not so dissimilar? While on the other hand if distance between those two items is high and it is in the direction of high variance then they are actually dissimilar?”

Question

I don’t know if I understood correctly from the professor.

I am studying big data, and professor was talking about similarity between different items of the same dataset. Image he was talking about: https://ibb.co/5RKFQLX

In: 0

Answer 1

You see how you can draw a (slanted) line through those dots and they’re all mostly along that line, very close to it?

The line would represent things that are directly proportional, which would be “very similar” to each other.

Whereas if you go outwards from the line (“in the direction of high variance”), then those dots would have “no relationship” to the line, would not “follow” the proportionality etc.