The LSHFunction API

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LSHFunction

The LSHFunctions module exposes a relatively easy interface for constructing new hash functions. Namely, you call LSHFunction with

the similarity statistic you want to hash on;
the number of hash functions you want to generate; and
keyword parameters specific to the LSH function family that you're sampling from.

LSHFunction(similarity, n_hashes::Integer=1; kws...)

For instance, in the snippet below we create a single hash function corresponding to cosine similarity:

julia> using LSHFunctions

julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(cossim);

julia> typeof(hashfn)
SimHash{Float32}

julia> n_hashes(hashfn)
1

julia> similarity(hashfn)
cossim (generic function with 2 methods)

As another example, following code snippet creates 10 hash functions for inner product similarity. All of the generated hash functions are bundled together into a single SignALSH struct. We specify the following keyword arguments:

dtype: the data type to use internally in the SignALSH struct.
maxnorm: an upper bound on the norm of the data points we're hashing, and a required parameter for SignALSH.

julia> using LSHFunctions

julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(inner_prod, 10; dtype=Float64, maxnorm=5.0);

julia> n_hashes(hashfn)
10

julia> typeof(hashfn)
SignALSH{Float64}

julia> hashfn.maxnorm
5.0

Creating multiple hash functions

In practice, you usually want to use multiple hash functions at the same time, and combine their hashes together in order to form a key with which to index into the hash table. To create N hash functions simultaneously, run

hashfn = LSHFunction(similarity, N; kws...)

hashfn will automatically generate and compute N different hash functions. It will then return a Vector of those hashes (unless hashtype(hashfn) is Bool, in which case it will return a BitArray).

See the FAQ for the reasoning behind using multiple locality-sensitive hash functions simultaneously.

If you want to know what hash function will be created for a given similarity, you can use lsh_family:

julia> lsh_family(jaccard)
MinHash

julia> lsh_family(ℓ1)
L1Hash

Utilities

LSHFunctions.jl provides a few common utility functions that you can use across LSHFunction subtypes:

n_hashes: returns the number of hash functions computed by an LSHFunction.

julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(jaccard);

julia> n_hashes(hashfn)
1

julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(jaccard, 10);

julia> n_hashes(hashfn)
10

julia> hashes = hashfn(randn(50));

julia> length(hashes)
10

similarity: returns the similarity statistic on which your hash function is locality-sensitive:

julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(cossim);

julia> similarity(hashfn)
cossim (generic function with 2 methods)

hashtype: returns the type of hash computed by the input hash function. Note that in practice hashfn(x) (or index_hash(hashfn,x) and query_hash(hashfn,x) for an AsymmetricLSHFunction) will return an array of hashes, one for each hash function you sampled when you called LSHFunction. hashtype is the data type of each element of hashfn(x).
```
julia> hashfn = LSHFunction(cossim, 5);

julia> hashtype(hashfn)
Bool

julia> hashes = hashfn(rand(100));

julia> typeof(hashes)
BitArray{1}

julia> typeof(hashes[1]) == hashtype(hashfn)
true
```

collision_probability: returns the probability of collision for two inputs with a given similarity. For instance, the probability that a single MinHash hash function causes a collision between inputs A and B is equal to jaccard(A,B):

julia> hashfn = MinHash();

julia> A = Set(["a", "b", "c"]);

julia> B = Set(["b", "c", "d"]);

julia> collision_probability(hashfn, A, B) ==
       collision_probability(hashfn, jaccard(A,B)) ==
       jaccard(A,B)
true

We often want to compute the probability that not just one hash collides, but that multiple hashes collide simultaneously. You can calculate this using the n_hashes keyword argument. If left unspecified, this parameter will default to n_hashes(hashfn).

julia> hashfn = MinHash(5);

julia> A = Set(["a", "b", "c"]);

julia> B = Set(["b", "c", "d"]);

julia> collision_probability(hashfn, A, B) ==
       collision_probability(hashfn, A, B; n_hashes=5) ==
       collision_probability(hashfn, A, B; n_hashes=1)^5
true

julia> sim = jaccard(A,B);

julia> collision_probability(hashfn, sim) ==
       collision_probability(hashfn, sim; n_hashes=5) ==
       collision_probability(hashfn, sim; n_hashes=1)^5
true