Hamming distance

[bvenn]

Description

The Hamming distance is used to determine the number of positions at which two sequences of equal size differ [1].

References

• [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance

Pointers

• the implementation should be located here: https://github.com/fslaborg/FSharp.Stats/blob/developer/src/FSharp.Stats/DistanceMetrics.fs
• within FSharp.Stats.DistanceMetrics, there are specialized modules Vector and Array, that contain the same functionality as the overarching module, but are optimized for high performance. You should first implement a version, that works on two sequences of generic type and if appropriate add optimized versions within DistanceMetrics.Vector and DistanceMetrics.Array.
• if not inferred automatically, you can ensure that the function works on any input (seq, string, seq), by adding the inline keyword

  let inline hamming (s1: 'a) (s2: 'a) : int =
      //iterate over both sequences and compare the entries at each index for equality
      //since the hamming distance is the number of unequal comparisons the result is and integer

• optional: add unit tests for sequences of int, float, and strings according to this.
  • don't forget to test negative values within the input sequence, as well as 0. and nan entries
• optional: add proper XML documentation #281
• Of course you can start developing in notebooks/scripts and afterwards we try to incorporate into the library.

Hints (click to expand if you need additional pointers)

• To be able to contribute to this library you'll need
  • an GitHub account
  • an IDE like Visual Studio Community or Visual Studio Code
  • dotnet 6 sdk
• to build the binaries yourself follow the instructions
• while working on the FSharp.Stats documentation (any file within https://github.com/fslaborg/FSharp.Stats/tree/developer/docs) you can navigate to the project folder with a prompt of your choice and use the command ./build watchdocs
• unit tests can be executed via ./build runtests

[Samo8]

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