We explore the relations between the notion of distance and a feature set based concept of similarity and show that this concept of similarity has a spatial interpretation that is complementary to distance: it is interpreted as “direction”. Furthermore, we show how proper normalization leads to distances that can be directly interpreted as dissimilarity: closeness in normalized space implies and is implied by similarity of the same objects while remoteness implies and is implied by dissimilarity. Finally, we show how, in research into de-standardization of the life course, properly normalizing may drastically and unequivocally change our interpretation of inter-cohortal distances.