# How to compute pairwise distance between two vectors in PyTorch?

PyTorchServer Side ProgrammingProgramming

A vector in PyTorch is a 1D tensor. To compute pairwise distance between two vectors, we can use the PairwiseDistance() function. It uses p-norm to compute the pairwise distance. PairwiseDistance is basically a class provided by the torch.nn module.

• The size of both the vectors must be same.

• Pairwise distance can be computed for both real and complex-valued inputs.

• The vectors must be in [N,D] shape, where N is the batch dimension and D is the vector dimension.

## Syntax

torch.nn.PairwiseDistance(p=2)

The default p is set to 2.

## Steps

You could use the following steps to compute the pairwise distance between two vectors

• Import the required library. In all the following examples, the required Python library is torch. Make sure you have already installed it.

import torch
• Define two vectors or two batches of vectors and print them. You can define real or complex-valued tensors.

v1 = torch.randn(3,4)
v2 = torch.randn(3,4)
• Create an instance of PairwiseDistance to compute the pairwise distance between the two vectors.

pdist = torch.nn.PairwiseDistance(p=2)
• Compute the pairwise distance between the above-defined vectors.

output = pdist (v1, v2)
• Print the computed tensor with the pairwise distance values.

print("Pairwise Distance:", output)

## Example 1

In this program, we compute the pairwise distance between two 1D vectors. Notice that we have unsqueezed the vectors to make them batched.

# python3 program to compute pairwise distance between
# the two 1D vectors/ tensors

import torch

# define first vector
v1 = torch.tensor([1.,2.,3.,4.]) # size is [4]

# unsqueeze v1 to make it of size [1,4]
v1 = torch.unsqueeze(v1,0)
print("Size of v1:",v1.size())

# define and unsqueeze second vector
v2 = torch.tensor([2.,3.,4.,5.])
v2 = torch.unsqueeze(v2, 0)
print("Size of v2:",v2.size())

print("Vector v1:\n", v1)
print("Vector v2:\n", v2)

# create an instance of the PairwiseDistance
pdist = torch.nn.PairwiseDistance(p=2)

# compute the distance
output = pdist(v1, v2)

# display the distance
print("Pairwise Distance:\n",output)

## Output

Size of v1: torch.Size([1, 4])
Size of v2: torch.Size([1, 4])
Vector v1:
tensor([[1., 2., 3., 4.]])
Vector v2:
tensor([[2., 3., 4., 5.]])
Pairwise Distance:
tensor([2.0000])

## Example 2

In this program, we compute the pairwise distance between two batches of 1D vectors.

# python3 program to compute pairwise distance between
# a batch vectors/ tensors
import torch

# define first batch of 3 vectors
v1 = torch.rand(3,4)
print("Size of v1:",v1.size())

# define second batch of 3 vectors
v2 = torch.rand(3,4)
print("Size of v2:",v2.size())
print("Vector v1:\n", v1)
print("Vector v2:\n", v2)

# define function to compute pairwise distance
pdist = torch.nn.PairwiseDistance(p=2)

# compute the distance
output = pdist(v1, v2)

# display the distances
print("Pairwise Distance:\n",output)

## Output

Size of v1: torch.Size([3, 4])
Size of v2: torch.Size([3, 4])
Vector v1:
tensor([[0.7245, 0.7953, 0.6502, 0.9976],
[0.1185, 0.6365, 0.3543, 0.3417],
[0.7827, 0.3520, 0.5634, 0.0534]])
Vector v2:
tensor([[0.6419, 0.2966, 0.4424, 0.6570],
[0.5991, 0.4173, 0.5387, 0.1531],
[0.8377, 0.6622, 0.8260, 0.8249]])
Pairwise Distance:
tensor([0.6441, 0.5904, 0.8737])
Updated on 20-Jan-2022 07:46:51