CLARITY

Clarity is an R package for comparing matrices in terms of their structure. If the matrices represent dissimilarities between objects, then the matrix can be decomposed into a structure and a relationship matrix, in the manner of Non-negative Matrix Factorization. Each object is represented in terms of:

• the Structure: the topology of a graph (mixture of trees) that generates the objects in a latent space
• a Relationship matrix represents the branch lengths between the latent structures.

Structural comparison allows for the the structures of two matrices to be compared whilst making minimal assumptions regarding the relationship matrix.

Clarity offers tools to rapidly perform the graph comparison, to identify nodes that are outlying and to identify elements of the matrices that are unusual with respect to one another.