Abstract: In allusion to shortcomings of current evaluation methods about rock burst tendency of coal seam, a model was built for comprehensively evaluating rock burst tendency of coal seam on basis of Hamming distance theory. Dynamic failure time, impact energy index, elastic energy index and uniaxial compressive strength are selected as comprehensive evaluation indexes in the model. Membership functions of evaluation objects are structured by use of linear interpolation formula. Then similar degree between the evaluation objects and standard objects is gotten respectively by Hamming distance method. Evaluation results are gotten through using the minimum Hamming distance to evaluate classification. The analysis result of actual example shows that the evaluation results of Hamming distance method are consistent with rock burst tendency of coal seam in actually field; by contrasting Hamming distances of coal samples which are at the same burst tendency level, it is found that Hamming distance method has a higher resolution ratio than fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and entropy-ideal point method.