title: A new method to evaluate the similarity of chromatographic fingerprints: weighted pearson product-moment correlation coefficient.
abstract: The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient is being used to evaluate the similarity of the high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprints of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in China. It is confirmed that a large range of peak areas produced the wrong results. A new algorithm concerning weighted Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient is proposed in this article. The results for both real cases and simulated data sets show that the weighted Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients allow relatively larger differences for large values, smaller differences for small values, and more reliable results than the unweighted Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. Weight selection depends on the specific scientific problem.
authors.affiliation: Department of Analytical Chemistry, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Yongsuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jiansong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Shumin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Yuzhu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu