title: Finding Euclidean Distance on String features
body: <p>I am trying to implement K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm. My dataset has values like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>164     5.60    3.17    30.98   Present 44  25.99   43.20   53  1
  
  178     0.95    4.75    21.06   Absent  49  23.74   24.69   61  0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am planning to use Euclidian Distance to calculate the distance between the two vectors. I have question as to how to compute the ED between two Strings for e.g. "Present" and "Absent" in the above example?</p>