How to compare two sets of data?

[lmh]

I have the books there in the hopes that if I sit next to them for long enough, some information will seep osmotically from them into me...

[Peter Apps]

In forensics there has been some work on fingerprinting the impurity profile of illicit drugs in order to compare batches and trace them back to source - that sounds similar to what wildfish wants to do.

Peter

[lmh]

same situation in foods: fingerprinting to identify whether jams contain the fruits they should etc.

[wildfish]

In forensics there has been some work on fingerprinting the impurity profile of illicit drugs in order to compare batches and trace them back to source - that sounds similar to what wildfish wants to do.

Peter

Thanks Peter, Don and lmh.

I think you are right there Peter. It is similar to fingerprint but just applied to my specific situation. Anyone can tell me more about that, e.g. how the fingerprint sets up limit/criteria for similarity test? what statistic method do they use? etc.
Any ideas/comments/suggestion will be very welcomed.

[Peter Apps]

Hi Wildfish

Time for you to do some literature searching- the forensic chemistry journals would be a good place to start.

Peter

[Don_Hilton]

If you google "Chromatography similarity index" you will see several hits on the first copule of pages related to computing a similarity index between chromatograms. (I did not go beyond the second page displayed.)

Not a very slelective set of index terms, but it may get you a start.