Spaces with a Single Center

Abstract

The intuitive view of the natural space created from large data is that it somehow looks as shown in Fig. 4.1. In the center are the most common, normal, or typical records and they all resemble each other to some extent; outside this are records that are more scattered and less normal or typical, resembling each other less; and outside this are records that are much more scattered, much less frequent, and very untypical. The reason that this structure seems intuitively appealing is that, as records become inherently more unusual (further from the center), they also become less alike (because of the different directions).