Condensed matrix function to find pairs

Question

For a set of observations:

[a1,a2,a3,a4,a5]

their pairwise distances

d=[[0,a12,a13,a14,a15]
   [a21,0,a23,a24,a25]
   [a31,         


        

Answer 1

You may find triu_indices useful. Like,

In []: ti= triu_indices(5, 1)
In []: r, c= ti[0][5], ti[1][5]
In []: r, c
Out[]: (1, 3)

Just notice that indices starts from 0. You may adjust it as you like, for example:

In []: def f(n, c):
   ..:     n= ceil(sqrt(2* n))
   ..:     ti= triu_indices(n, 1)
   ..:     return ti[0][c]+ 1, ti[1][c]+ 1
   ..:
In []: f(len(c), 5)
Out[]: (2, 4)