Table 1.
Examples for the numerical representation of herbal formulae
| Formula | herb1 | herb2 | herb3 | herb4 | herb5 | herb6 | herb7 | herb8 | herb9 | herb10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formula 1 | 0 | 0.5 | 0 | 0.25 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0.75 | 0 |
| Formula 2 | 0.375 | 0.625 | 0.875 | 0.125 | 0.75 | 0 | 1 | 0.25 | 0 | 0.5 |
| Formula 3 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
*Assume there are a total of 10 herbs denoted by herb1, herb2…herb10 (j=1, 2…,10), and three herbal formulae containing the following herbs in sequence (i=1,2,3): Formula 1: herb4, herb2, herb9 and herb6 (k=4); Formula 2: herb4, herb8, herb1, herb10, herb2, herb5, herb3 and herb7 (k=8); and Formula 3: herb1 and herb6 (k=2). For herb2 in Formula 1, we calculated that a12 =2 and b12=2/4=0.5. The matrix representation for this artificial data set is shown in the table.