The Canberra distance is a numerical measure of the distance between pairs of points in a vector space, introduced in 1966[1] and refined in 1967[2] by Godfrey N. Lance and William T. Williams.
It is a weighted version of L₁ (Manhattan) distance.
[3] The Canberra distance has been used as a metric for comparing ranked lists[3] and for intrusion detection in computer security.
[4] It has also been used to analyze the gut microbiome in different disease states.
The Canberra metric, Adkins form, divides the distance d by (n-Z) where Z is the number of attributes that are 0 for p and q.