Ask about final result in emd.m

Question

Boris 2012-5-6

According to: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/22962-the-earth-movers-distance And thanks to Ulas Yilmaz for sahring this file. I want to ask. What is the final result of the emd.m?

Here is the code for linear programming in emd.m

% linear programming
[x, fval] = linprog(f, A, b, Aeq, beq, lb);
fval = fval / sum(x);

Is the fval(the value of the total flow) as the final result of emd.m? I mean (fval) is the value of EMD(P,Q)?

Than you for your help.

Boris.

Answer 1

Wayne King 2012-5-6

Well, I don't know this specific application but I can tell you what the outputs of linprog() mean in general.

linprog() minimizes the linear functional f'*A subject to a constraint, which is A*x <=b

The output fval is the value of the linear functional with the minimizing x: fval = f'*x (where here x is the minimizing vector)

In this case, it looks like x is the minimizing flow vector and fval is the value of the flow using that minimizing vector.