Can I use the Matlab function called "dice" to compare two histograms (or discrete probability distributions)?

Can I use the Matlab function called "dice" (i.e. the "Sørensen-Dice similarity coefficient for image segmentation") to compare two histograms (or discrete probability distributions)?

similarity = dice(hist1,hist2)

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

No. Use of the dice function to compare hisograms would be a complete misuse of the tool. Instead, you might better use tools from statistics that are designed for the purpose of comparing two distributions.

So perhaps a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. You could use kstest2 to decide if the two underlying samples that were used to generate the histograms come from the same distributions.

[Sim]

Thanks a lot both @Malay Agarwal and @John D'Errico for your answers..!! In general, I have used already pdist2 and kstest2, and I just wanted to employ the Sørensen-Dice similarity... :-)

Answer 2

[Malay Agarwal]

Hi Sim

I am not sure if the dice function can be used to compare two histograms, but you can use the function pdist2 to get a similarlity score between the histograms. Please refer to this MATLAB answer: comparison of two histograms using pdist2 - MATLAB Answers - MATLAB Central (mathworks.com).