5. Edit Distance
The chapter discusses the concept of Edit Distance, primarily focusing on how it measures the similarity between two documents through the minimum number of operations required for transformation. It elaborates on specific operations such as insertion, deletion, and substitution of characters, demonstrating practical applications in spell checking and genetics through the Levenshtein distance. Additionally, the chapter explores algorithm design around computing edit distance efficiently using dynamic programming techniques.
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What we have learnt
- Edit Distance measures the minimum number of operations required to transform one document into another.
- The three basic operations for calculating edit distance are insertion, deletion, and substitution of characters.
- Edit Distance has practical applications in spell checking and comparing genetic information between species.
Key Concepts
- -- Edit Distance
- A measure of the minimum number of edits (insertions, deletions, substitutions) needed to change one string into another.
- -- Levenshtein Distance
- A specific case of Edit Distance that quantifies how dissimilar two strings are by counting the minimum number of single-character edits.
- -- Dynamic Programming
- An algorithmic technique used to solve problems by breaking them into simpler subproblems, which are solved independently and then combined to form a solution.
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