---
title: Different Measures of Distance
tags: geometry
description: A few different ways of calculating distance in noncontinuous 2d spaces
category: math
---
How far is it from one place to another? How does that change if
you're on a flat plane? What if that plane has discrete distances,
like a checkerboard, or Civ map, or pixels on a screen?
If we've got two points, *how far do you have to move to get from one
to the other?*
### Euclidean Distance
{width=150 height=150}
This is the go-to of distance calculations. If you're talking about
continuous, uniform planar (2d) space[^inline1], [Euclidean
distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_distance) is the
shortest distance between two points.
In the most general sense, the way you get this distance is by
measuring it. If you're lucky enough to be using [Cartesian
coordinates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system),
then you can calculate the distance based on the distance between the
two coordinate points. For our purposes, I'm going to use $a$ and $b$,
located at $(x_1, y_1)$ and $(x_2, y_2)$.
[Pythagoras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem)
figured out how to calculate the length of the hypotenuse of a right
triangle. The fun part is that, with Cartesian coordinates, *any pair
of points* can now define a right triangle. Just take one point with
an x coordinate from one point and a y coordinate from the other, and
the triangle itself can be defined as $((x_1, y_1), (x_1, y_2), (x_2,
y_2))$[^inline2].
At that point, it becomes pretty easy. The length of the two sides is
just the absolute value of the difference between their x and y
coordinates. So, $|x_1 - x_2|$ and $|y_1 - y_2|$. Those are easy to
plug into the Pythagorean equation to get the distance between the
points ($d$):
$$d = \sqrt{ |x_1 - x_2|^2 + |y_1 - y_2|^2 }$$
In code, this might look something like:
~~~ { .python }
def eucliddistance(x1, y1, x2, y2):
xdist = abs(x1 - x2)
ydist = abs(y1 - y2)
return math.sqrt( (xdist ** 2) + (ydist ** 2) )
~~~
This all seems a bit unnecessary, though, right? Cartesian coordinates
are universal. They're how we think about points. All of our screens
are Cartesian planes, and even our 3d worlds are Cartesian. Done and
done.
Still, I think it's good to appreciate how we got here. Why? **Because
it doesn't work for our purposes.**
[{width=150 height=150}](/images/post_2016_08_25/euclid_voronoi.png)
A "point", to Euclid, is infinitesimal -- it has no size, nor
shape. And a Euclidean plane is continuous -- there is no "smallest
distance" you can move.
Pixels, and graph squares, on the other hand, take up space. And if
you want to get from $(0,0)$ to $(7,14)$ on a discrete plane, there's
no such thing as moving 15.56247..... That's the nature of a discrete
space -- everything's an integer. And the other fun bit is that you
can't move in arbitrary directions. On a square grid, you've only got
8 directions to go, at most.
It is also, frankly, a bit costly to calculate. Square roots are a bit
more complicated than adding and subtracting.
Still, Euclidean distance is the definition of distance. And though we
can't use it to determine distance of movement, we can still use it
for comparative purposes.
#### Voronoi Diagrams
For illustration purposes, I've decided to use [Voronoi
diagrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram). Voronoi
diagrams are a way of splitting up planes around a set of sites, such
that all points in the plane are associated with the closest site.
The simplest, slowest possible way to generate such a diagram is to
iterate over each pixel in an image, calculate the distance between
that pixel and each site, sort the sites by distance, and assign that
site to the pixel. So I coded that up. I've put that code [up on
github](https://github.com/jmelesky/voronoi_example). Nothing fancy
going on, I assure you.
By looking at the Voronoi diagrams for the same set of sites, using
different distance measures, we can get an appreciation for how those
measures vary, and what their characteristics are.
### Manhattan Distance
[{width=150 height=150}](/images/post_2016_08_25/taxi_voronoi.png)
The island of Manhattan is densly populated, and densely built. For
our purposes, though, it's also, notably, laid out like a grid. If you
want to get two blocks up and two blocks over, you're going to have to
move four total block lengths to get there. And that's a pretty
straightforward distance measure.
It's also known as taxicab distance, rectilinear distance, and a bunch
of other things. And it's the simplest calculation we're going to be
making. Just add the lengths of each side of our triangle:
$$d = |x_1 - x_2| + |y_1 - y_2|$$
In code, it might look like this:
~~~ { .python }
def taxidistance(x1, y1, x2, y2):
return (abs(x1 - x2) + abs(y1 - y2))
~~~
If you're on a checkerboard grid, and you are limited in movement to
only the four cardinal directions, this is how you're going to measure
getting from place to place. If you want to get from $(0,0)$ to
$(7,14)$ in a taxi, you're going to go 21 squares, which is a fair bit
further than 15.56.
If you take a look at the Voronoi diagram derived from taxi distance,
you'll see that the shapes have changed from straight-edged polygons
to odd, almost art-deco-like shapes. In particular, some of the places
where there were very long, thin cells in the Euclidean version have
changed to blocky, angled, and often much distorted versions.
### Civ Distance
[{width=150 height=150}](/images/post_2016_08_25/civ_voronoi.png)
If Manhattan distance is what you reckon with when you can only move
in the four cardinal directions, what do you do when you can move in
all 8 possible directions? Up until the most recent edition, the
[Civilization games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_%28series%29) had
exactly that scenario[^1]. So let's call this the Civ distance.
Calculating this one is also easy. Instead of adding the sides
together, you just take the length of the longest side.
How's that work, exactly? Well, if you're going from $(0,0)$ to
$(7,14)$, you go at an angle for 7 squares (moving twice as fast as
taxicabs). At that point, you're at $(7,7)$, and it's a straight shot
to $(7,14)$ only 7 squares away. Just 14 squares total.
Mathematically, it looks like this:
$$d = \max(|x_1 - x_2|, |y_1 - y_2|)$$
And in code, something like this:
~~~ {.python}
def civdistance(x1, y1, x2, y2):
return (max(abs(x1 - x2), abs(y1 - y2)))
~~~
Again, very simple. And 14 is actually shorter than 15.56. By taxi, up
and over is a distance of two, by Euclid that same distance is 1.41
and change. But by Civ distance, that same span is only one. That, of
course leads to some different distortions in the voronoi
diagram. Where the taxicab Voronoi cells stretched up, down, left, and
right, the Civ cells are stretching further in the diagonals.
Overall, Civ distance is truer to Euclid than taking the taxi, but
it's still a very different beast.
### D&D Distance
Perhaps you've played some Dungeons & Dragons. Perhaps you've
specifically played 3.5ed[^inline3]. That
game was notorious for its complex, tactical, grid-based combat
system. Each square represented 5 feet of space, and each character
had a limited amount of movement per turn.
[{width=150 height=150}](/images/post_2016_08_25/dandd_voronoi.png)
Now, it didn't make sense to allow only movement in the four cardinal
directions. That would, if nothing else, be incredibly frustrating for
players trying to move their characters around the map.
They also didn't want to allow willy-nilly Civ-style movement, since
that would offer a clear advantage to anyone who wished to use the
diagonals[^4ed].
Ultimately, they decided on an iterative process which was a bit more
complex:
- The first time (and every odd time) you move a diagonal, it costs
5 feet of movement/distance, just like moving in a cardinal
direction
- The second time (and every even time) you move a diagonal, it
costs 10 feet of movement/distance, like you're taking a taxicab
The net result is that, if you start out moving diagonally only, it's
5 feet, then 15, then 20, then 30, then 35, then 45, etc. Translating
feet to grid square units, it's 1 unit, then 3, then 4, then 6, then
7, then 9.
That pattern, as it turns out, is the floor of 1.5 * the diagonal
distance.
To generalize that to more than just the purely diagonal, we figure
out how much we can go straight, then do the rest diagonal, and add
them together:
$$d_1 = \max(|x_1 - x_2|, |y_1 - y_2|) - \min(|x_1 - x_2|, |y_1 - y_2|)$$
$$d_2 = \lfloor 1.5 \times (\min(|x_1 - x_2|, |y_1 - y_2|))\rfloor$$
$$d = d_1 + d_2$$
And in code, that looks like this[^odd]:
~~~ {.python}
def dandddistance(x1, y1, x2, y2):
mindist = min(abs(x1 - x2), abs(y1 - y2))
maxdist = max(abs(x1 - x2), abs(y1 - y2))
return ((maxdist - mindist) + (1.5 * mindist))
~~~
Looking at the Voronoi diagram, this is easily the closest match to
Euclid. And that's not surprsing, really. When Euclid things up and
over is 1.41 and change, taxicabs and Civ think it's 2 and 1,
respectively, D&D thinks it's (about) 1.5, which is much, much closer
to the continuous distance. To get from $(0,0)$ to $(7,14)$ by way of
D&D distance is 17, which is pretty close to the 15.56 of Euclid, and
without the distortions of Civ.
Of course, it's a bit more complex to calculate than Civ or taxi, but
it doesn't require taking any square routes, which marks it as still
computationally simpler than Euclid. And it's grid-native. The
designers of 3.5 did a good job finding a relatively simple
approximation for distance.
### Conclusion
And here we are at the end. Hopefully getting from point $a$ to point
$b$ wasn't too rough, and I know I learned a thing or two on the way.
Things get more complicated when you start measuring things in three
dimensions. The D&D algorithm, particularly, is unlikely to scale well
as you end up figuring out the appropriate values for each of the 26
different directions you can go. Maybe I'll revisit this again.
And let's not forget non-spatial distances! [Hamming
distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance) is
particularly fun to think about. It has uses in small-scale AI tasks
like autocorrect, as well as in very-large-dimension binary vector
spaces[^duh]. I guess I'm saying that distances are fascinating
things, and there's so much more to talk about.
Thanks for bearing with me.
[^inline1]: It holds for 3d and higher-dimensional spaces, too.
[^inline2]: Or $((x_1, y_1), (x_2, y_1), (x_2, y_2))$ if you're feeling frisky.
[^1]: For an even longer time, the king piece on a chessboard had the
exact same abilities, which is why this is probably more commonly
known as "chessboard distance", or [Chebyshev
distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_distance), after
Pafnuty Chebyshev, a 19th-century Russian mathematician. But I've
played more Civ than chess, frankly.
[^inline3]: Or its offshoot, Pathfinder; or, for that
matter, any of the d20 games that also derived from that source.
[^4ed]: When it came time to publish the 4th edition of D&D, however,
they changed their mind on this. The complexity of the 3.5 distance
calculation wasn't worth the verisimilitude, so they moved to using
Civ distances instead. This decision also led to the infamous [square
fireballs](http://diceofdoom.com/blog/2009/10/powergaming-understanding-area-of-effect-in-dnd4e/),
but no system is perfect.
[^odd]: You might notice that there isn't a `min` or `math.floor` call
in that code. There was, for a bit, but it was generating [some
strange artifacts](/images/post_2016_08_25/odd_dandd_voronoi.png),
where strange striping was occurring. I suspect that's due to an odd
quantizing effect, but haven't looked into it deeply. In the meantime,
using the un-floored numbers produce a more coherent image.
[^duh]:
*Obviously*
...
For some machine learning tasks, you end up representing different
things in very large vector spaces (one dimension for each
"feature" you are keeping track of). In many cases, *binary*
features are more tractable and just as useful -- for example, you
might keep track of *whether* a certain word shows up in a
document, rather than *how many times* it shows up. When those two
situations coincide, Hamming distance becomes more palatable and
tractable than Euclidean distance.