Understanding a few key words can make things a lot clearer. For example, an axis could represent the presence or absence of a chlorine substituent, or of an aromatic ring. Descriptors-molecular properties related to structure or electronic characteristics such as polarizability, aromatic ring centers, and others.
Descriptors provide a way of comparing and contrasting molecules in a combinatorial library.
Diversity-the concept of culling the most molecularly diverse set of compounds from a combinatorial library to pare the library down to a manageable size and increase the chances of discovering a potential drug candidate. Fingerprint-a string of yes or no answers about a molecule's properties. These answers can be represented as zeros and ones in a bit string, or fingerprint, unique to that compound. The fingerprints can then be analyzed for their diversity or similarity. Metric-another term for descriptor.