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/*
 * LingPipe v. 4.1.0
 * Copyright (C) 2003-2011 Alias-i
 *
 * This program is licensed under the Alias-i Royalty Free License
 * Version 1 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the Alias-i
 * Royalty Free License Version 1 for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the Alias-i Royalty Free License
 * Version 1 along with this program; if not, visit
 * http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/licenses/lingpipe-license-1.txt or contact
 * Alias-i, Inc. at 181 North 11th Street, Suite 401, Brooklyn, NY 11211,
 * +1 (718) 290-9170.
 */

package com.aliasi.util;

/**
 * The Proximity interface provides a general method for
 * defining closeness between two objects.  Proximity is a similarity
 * measure, with two objects having higher proximity being more
 * similar to one another.  It provides a single method {@link
 * #proximity(Object,Object)} returning the proximity between two
 * objects.  The closer two objects are, the higher their proximity
 * value.
 *
 * Proximity runs in the other direction from distance.  With
 * distance, the closer two objects are, the lower their distance
 * value.  Many classes implement both Proximity and
 * {@link Distance}, with one method defined in terms of the other.
 * For instance, negation converts a distance into a proximity.
 *
 * @author  Bob Carpenter
 * @version 3.0
 * @since   LingPipe3.0
 * @param  the type of objects between which proximity is defined
 */
public interface Proximity {

    /**
     * Returns the distance between the specified pair of objects.
     *
     * @param e1 First object.
     * @param e2 Second object.
     * @return Proximity between the two objects.
     */
    public double proximity(E e1, E e2);

}