A survey of distance measures for mixed variables

Abstract

Distance measures are base for many statistical and data science methods with their applicability in various fields of science. Mixed variables data which is combination of continuous and categorical variables occurs frequently in fields such as medical, agriculture, remote sensing, biology, marketing, ecology etc., but a little work has been done for evaluating distance for such type of data. As there is not much literature available on distance measures for mixed data, therefore the fundamental sources that provide a comprehensive detail of a particular measure for mixed variables data were studied and reviewed in this paper.