Similarity Searching

• What is similarity?

  • Depends on the yardstick chosen

• Chemical Structures

  • Each bit in a fingerprint is a dimension
  • Change the fingerprint, change the similarity
  • Equal weighting applied to all dimensions

• Results dictated by algorithm

  • No feedback
  • No user control over results
  • Not possible to iteratively improve the answer

• What is similarity?

  • What is most important to the user?

Notes: