how can I compare HashMaps with different keys ?

[aneuryzma]

I have a clustering algorithm storing the clusters in HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>>.

I need to compare it with the ground truth which is stored in another HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>>.

The keys are not the same, because the array is created by incremental clustering, so I was wondering how can I compare the original clusters with the generated ones.

I'm using NMI and BCUBED as clustering evaluation measures, but my problem is how to refer to the same cluster (ArrayList<String>) if they have different keys..

any idea ?
thanks

[KevinWorkman]

Erm, I suppose you could get all of the values in each map and compare them?

[aneuryzma]

Yeah but how do I compare the respective clusters ? You know what I mean ? How can I find the correct cluster and compare to the original one ?

[KevinWorkman]

That's not really a question we can answer. We don't know any of the specifics you're working with. Is there a way to convert from one key to another? Are you just trying to compare for equality (as in, does on Map contain a certain value found in another Map)? Something else?

[aneuryzma]

Yeah I'm comparing if each item in the map has the same content of the original map. My issue is that the items are not necessarily in the same order...

[KevinWorkman]

So where exactly are you getting stuck? Do you know how to get the values of a Map? Do you know how to iterate over them? Do you know how to compare two collections?

[aneuryzma]

I know how to get values of the map, I know how to iterate them. I don't know how to recognize the same cluster (HashMap value, that is an ArrayList<String>) since the keys are different between original HashMap and new generated HashMap.

I need to compare the clusters to see how much they differ. I have a similarity measure for that, but I dunno how to compare them.

In otherwords I need to compare the Hashmaps, which have the elements not in the same order, and with different keys.