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TaxicabgeometryWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Taxicabgeometry
FromWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Taxicabgeometry,consideredbyHermannMinkowskiin19thcentury
Germany,isaformofgeometryinwhichtheusualdistancefunctionofmetric
orEuclideangeometryisreplacedbyanewmetricinwhichthedistance
betweentwopointsisthesumoftheabsolutedifferencesoftheirCartesian
coordinates.
Thetaxicabmetricisalsoknownasrectilineardistance,L1distanceor
norm(seeLpspace),snakedistance,cityblockdistance,Manhattan
distanceorManhattanlength,withcorrespondingvariationsinthenameof
thegeometry.[1]Thelatternamesalludetothegridlayoutofmoststreetson
theislandofManhattan,whichcausestheshortestpathacarcouldtake
betweentwointersectionsintheboroughtohavelengthequaltothe
intersections'distanceintaxicabgeometry.

Contents
1 Formaldefinition
2 Properties
2.1 Circles
3 Applications
3.1 Measuresofdistancesinchess
3.2 Compressedsensing
4 Seealso
5 Notes
6 References
7 Externallinks

Taxicabgeometryversus
Euclideandistance:Intaxicab
geometry,thered,yellow,and
bluepathsallhavetheshortest
lengthof12.InEuclidean
geometry,thegreenlinehas
length
,andisthe
uniqueshortestpath.

Formaldefinition
Thetaxicabdistance, ,betweentwovectors
inanndimensionalrealvectorspacewithfixedCartesian
coordinatesystem,isthesumofthelengthsoftheprojectionsofthelinesegmentbetweenthepointsontothe
coordinateaxes.Moreformally,

where

arevectors

Forexample,intheplane,thetaxicabdistancebetween

and

is

Properties
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Taxicabdistancedependsontherotationofthecoordinatesystem,butdoesnotdependonitsreflectionabouta
coordinateaxisoritstranslation.TaxicabgeometrysatisfiesallofHilbert'saxioms(aformalizationofEuclidean
geometry)exceptforthesideanglesideaxiom,astwotriangleswithequally"long"twosidesandanidentical
anglebetweenthemaretypicallynotcongruentunlessthementionedsideshappentobeparallel.

Circles
Acircleisasetofpointswithafixeddistance,calledtheradius,fromapointcalledthe
center.Intaxicabgeometry,distanceisdeterminedbyadifferentmetricthaninEuclidean
geometry,andtheshapeofcircleschangesaswell.Taxicabcirclesaresquareswithsides
orientedata45angletothecoordinateaxes.Theimagetotherightshowswhythisistrue,
byshowinginredthesetofallpointswithafixeddistancefromacenter,showninblue.As
thesizeofthecityblocksdiminishes,thepointsbecomemorenumerousandbecomearotated
squareinacontinuoustaxicabgeometry.Whileeachsidewouldhavelength2rusinga
Euclideanmetric,whereristhecircle'sradius,itslengthintaxicabgeometryis2r.Thus,a
circle'scircumferenceis8r.Thus,thevalueofageometricanalogto is4inthisgeometry.
Theformulafortheunitcircleintaxicabgeometryis
inCartesiancoordinates
and

inpolarcoordinates.
AcircleofradiusrfortheChebyshevdistance(Lmetric)onaplaneisalsoasquarewith
sidelength2rparalleltothecoordinateaxes,soplanarChebyshevdistancecanbeviewedas
equivalentbyrotationandscalingtoplanartaxicabdistance.However,thisequivalence
betweenL1andLmetricsdoesnotgeneralizetohigherdimensions.

Circlesin
discreteand
continuous
taxicab
geometry

Whenevereachpairinacollectionofthesecircleshasanonemptyintersection,thereexistsanintersectionpoint
forthewholecollectiontherefore,theManhattandistanceformsaninjectivemetricspace.
Acircleofradius1(usingthisdistance)isthevonNeumannneighborhoodofitscenter.

Applications
Measuresofdistancesinchess
Inchess,thedistancebetweensquaresonthechessboardforrooksismeasuredintaxicabdistancekingsand
queensuseChebyshevdistance,andbishopsusethetaxicabdistance(betweensquaresofthesamecolor)onthe
chessboardrotated45degrees,i.e.,withitsdiagonalsascoordinateaxes.Toreachfromonesquaretoanother,only
kingsrequirethenumberofmovesequaltothedistancerooks,queensandbishopsrequireoneortwomoves(on
anemptyboard,andassumingthatthemoveispossibleatallinthebishop'scase).

Compressedsensing
Insolvinganunderdeterminedsystemoflinearequations,theregularisationtermfortheparametervectoris
expressedintermsofthe norm(taxicabgeometry)ofthevector.[2]Thisapproachappearsinthesignalrecovery
frameworkcalledcompressedsensing.
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Seealso
Normedvectorspace
Metric
Orthogonalconvexhull
Hammingdistance
Fifteenpuzzle
Randomwalk
Manhattanwiring
Rtiendgamestudy

Notes
1.Manhattandistance(http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/manhattanDistance.html)
2.Formostlargeunderdeterminedsystemsoflinearequationstheminimal normsolutionisalsothesparsestsolution
SeeDonoho,DavidL,Communicationsonpureandappliedmathematics,59,797(2006)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpa.20132

References
EugeneF.Krause(1987).TaxicabGeometry.Dover.ISBN0486252027.

Externallinks
cityblockmetric(http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/CityBlockMetric.html)onPlanetMath
Weisstein,EricW.,"TaxicabMetric"(http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TaxicabMetric.html),MathWorld.
Manhattandistance(http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/manhattanDistance.html).PaulE.Black,Dictionary
ofAlgorithmsandDataStructures(http://www.nist.gov/dads/),NIST
Taxi!(http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/taxi.html)AMScolumnaboutTaxicabgeometry
TaxicabGeometry.net(http://www.taxicabgeometry.net)awebsitededicatedtotaxicabgeometryresearch
andinformation
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