I'm going to suggest three methods, with different pros and cons which I will outline.
Hash Code
This is the obvious "solution", though it has been correctly pointed out that it will not be unique. However, it will be very unlikely that any two arrays will have the same value.
Weighted Sum
Your elements appear to be bounded; perhaps they range from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 1. If this is the case, you can multiply the first number by N^0, the second by N^1, the third by N^2 and so on, where N is some large number (ideally the inverse of your precision). This is easily implemented, particularly if you use a matrix package, and very fast. We can make this unique if we choose.
Euclidean Distance from Mean
Subtract the mean of your arrays from each array, square the results, sum the squares. If you have an expected mean, you can use that. Again, not unique, there will be collisions, but you (almost) can't avoid that.
The difficulty of uniqueness
It has already been explained that hashing will not give you a unique solution. A unique number is possible in theory, using the Weighted Sum, but we have to use numbers of a very large size. Let's say your numbers are 64 bits in memory. That means that there are 2^64 possible numbers they can represent (slightly less using floating point). Eighteen such numbers in an array could represent 2^(64*18) different numbers. That's huge. If you use anything less, you will not be able to guarantee uniqueness due to the pigeonhole principle.
Let's look at a trivial example. If you have four letters, a, b, c and d, and you have to number them each uniquely using the numbers 1 to 3, you can't. That's the pigeonhole principle. You have 2^(18*64) possible numbers. You can't number them uniquely with less than 2^(18*64) numbers, and hashing doesn't give you that.
If you use BigDecimal, you can represent (almost) arbitrarily large numbers. If the largest element you can get is 1 and the smallest 0, then you can set N = 1/(precision) and apply the Weighted Sum mentioned above. This will guarantee uniqueness. The precision for doubles in Java is Double.MIN_VALUE. Note that the array of weights needs to be stored in _Big Decimal_s!
That satisfies this part of your question:
create a computational value for each array, which is unique to it
based upon values inside it
However, there is a problem:
1 and 2 suck for K Means
I am assuming from your discussion with Marco 13 that you are performing the clustering on the single values, not the length 18 arrays. As Marco has already mentioned, Hashing sucks for K means. The whole idea is that the smallest change in the data will result in a large change in Hash Values. That means that two images which are similar, produce two very similar arrays, produce two very different "unique" numbers. Similarity is not preserved. The result will be pseudo random!!!
Weighted Sums are better, but still bad. It will basically ignore all the elements except for the last one, unless the last element is the same. Only then will it look at the next to last, and so on. Similarity is not really preserved.
Euclidean distance from the mean (or at least some point) will at least group things together in a sort of sensible way. Direction will be ignored, but at least things that are far from the mean won't be grouped with things that are close. Similarity of one feature is preserved, the other features are lost.
In summary
1 is very easy, but is not unique and doesn't preserve similarity.
2 is easy, can be unique and doesn't preserve similarity.
3 is easy, but is not unique and preserves some similarity.
Implementatio of Weighted Sum. Not really tested.
public class Array2UniqueID {
private final double min;
private final double max;
private final double prec;
private final int length;
/**
* Used to provide a {@code BigInteger} that is unique to the given array.
* <p>
* This uses weighted sum to guarantee that two IDs match if and only if
* every element of the array also matches. Similarity is not preserved.
*
* @param min smallest value an array element can possibly take
* @param max largest value an array element can possibly take
* @param prec smallest difference possible between two array elements
* @param length length of each array
*/
public Array2UniqueID(double min, double max, double prec, int length) {
this.min = min;
this.max = max;
this.prec = prec;
this.length = length;
}
/**
* A convenience constructor which assumes the array consists of doubles of
* full range.
* <p>
* This will result in very large IDs being returned.
*
* @see Array2UniqueID#Array2UniqueID(double, double, double, int)
* @param length
*/
public Array2UniqueID(int length) {
this(-Double.MAX_VALUE, Double.MAX_VALUE, Double.MIN_VALUE, length);
}
public BigDecimal createUniqueID(double[] array) {
// Validate the data
if (array.length != length) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Array length must be "
+ length + " but was " + array.length);
}
for (double d : array) {
if (d < min || d > max) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Each element of the array"
+ " must be in the range [" + min + ", " + max + "]");
}
}
double range = max - min;
/* maxNums is the maximum number of numbers that could possibly exist
* between max and min.
* The ID will be in the range 0 to maxNums^length.
* maxNums = range / prec + 1
* Stored as a BigDecimal for convenience, but is an integer
*/
BigDecimal maxNums = BigDecimal.valueOf(range)
.divide(BigDecimal.valueOf(prec))
.add(BigDecimal.ONE);
// For convenience
BigDecimal id = BigDecimal.valueOf(0);
// 2^[ (el-1)*length + i ]
for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
BigDecimal num = BigDecimal.valueOf(array[i])
.divide(BigDecimal.valueOf(prec))
.multiply(maxNums).pow(i);
id = id.add(num);
}
return id;
}
