Taxicab geometry

A taxicab geometry or a Manhattan geometry is a geometry

whose usual distance function or metric of Euclidean geometry is
replaced by a new metric in which the distance between two points
is the sum of the absolute differences of their Cartesian coordinates.
The taxicab metric is also known as rectilinear distance, L1
distance, L1 distance or norm (see Lp space), snake distance, city
block distance, Manhattan distance or Manhattan length.[1] The
latter names refer to the rectilinear street layout on the island of
Manhattan, where the shortest path a taxi travels between two
points is the sum of the absolute values of distances that it travels on
avenues and on streets.

The geometry has been used in regression analysis since the 18th
century, and is often referred to as LASSO. The geometric
interpretation dates to non-Euclidean geometry of the 19th century
and is due to Hermann Minkowski.

In , the taxicab distance between two points and

is . That is, it is the sum of the
absolute values of the differences in both coordinates.

Formal definition
The taxicab distance, , between two vectors
in an n-
dimensional real vector space with fixed Cartesian coordinate
system, is the sum of the lengths of the projections of the line
segment between the points onto the coordinate axes. More
formally,

Points on three circles (the set of

points equidistant from a given point)
in taxicab geometry
For example, in , the taxicab distance between
and is

History
The L1 metric was used in regression analysis in 1757 by Roger Joseph Boscovich.[2] The geometric
interpretation dates to the late 19th century and the development of non-Euclidean geometries, notably by
Hermann Minkowski and his Minkowski inequality, of which this geometry is a special case, particularly
used in the geometry of numbers, (Minkowski 1910). The formalization of Lp spaces is credited to (Riesz
1910).

Properties
Taxicab distance depends on the rotation of the coordinate system, but does not depend on its reflection
about a coordinate axis or its translation. Taxicab geometry satisfies all of Hilbert's axioms (a formalization
of Euclidean geometry) except for the side-angle-side axiom, as two triangles with equally "long" two sides
and an identical angle between them are typically not congruent unless the mentioned sides are parallel.

Balls

A topological ball is a set of points with a fixed distance, called the radius, from a point called the center. In
n-dimensional Euclidean geometry, the balls are spheres. In taxicab geometry, distance is determined by a
different metric than in Euclidean geometry, and the shape of the ball changes as well. In n dimensions, a
taxicab ball is in the shape of an n-dimensional orthoplex. In two dimensions, these are squares with sides
oriented at a 45° angle to the coordinate axes. The image to the right shows why this is true, by showing in
red the set of all points with a fixed distance from a center, shown in blue. As the size of the city blocks
diminishes, the points become more numerous and become a rotated square in a continuous taxicab
geometry. While each side would have length using a Euclidean metric, where r is the circle's radius,
its length in taxicab geometry is 2r. Thus, a circle's circumference is 8r. Thus, the value of a geometric
analog to is 4 in this geometry. The formula for the unit circle in taxicab geometry is in
Cartesian coordinates and

in polar coordinates.

A circle of radius 1 (using this distance) is the von Neumann neighborhood of its center.

A circle of radius r for the Chebyshev distance (L∞ metric) on a plane is also a square with side length 2r
parallel to the coordinate axes, so planar Chebyshev distance can be viewed as equivalent by rotation and
scaling to planar taxicab distance. However, this equivalence between L1 and L∞ metrics does not
generalize to higher dimensions.

Whenever each pair in a collection of these circles has a nonempty intersection, there exists an intersection
point for the whole collection; therefore, the Manhattan distance forms an injective metric space.

Arc length

Let be a continuously differentiable function in . Let be the taxicab arc length of the planar
curve defined by on some interval . Then the taxicab length of the infinitesimal regular partition
of the arc, , is given by:[3]
By the Mean Value Theorem, there exists some point
between and such that
.[4]

Then is given as the sum of every partition of on as

they get arbitrarily small.

Taxicab geometry versus Euclidean

To test this, take the taxicab circle of radius centered at the
origin. Its curve in the first quadrant is given by
whose length is
distance: In taxicab geometry, the red,
yellow, blue, and green paths all have the
same length of 12. In Euclidean geometry,
the green line has length and
is the unique shortest path, while the other
paths have the longer length of 12.

Multiplying this value by to account for the remaining quadrants

gives , which agrees with the circumference of a taxicab circle.[5]
Now take the Euclidean circle of radius centered at the origin,
which is given by . Its arc length in the first
quadrant is given by

Curves defined by monotone

increasing or decreasing functions
have the same taxicab arc length as
long as they share the same
Accounting for the remaining quadrants gives again. endpoints.
Therefore, the circumference of the taxicab circle and the Euclidean
circle in the taxicab metric are equal.[6] In fact, for any function
that is monotonic and differentiable with a continuous derivative over an interval , the arc length of
over is .[7]

Triangle congruence

Two triangles are congruent if and only if three corresponding sides are equal in distance and three
corresponding angles are equal in measure. There are several theorems that guarantee triangle congruence
in Euclidean geometry, namely Angle-Angle-Side (AAS), Angle-Side-Angle (ASA), Side-Angle-Side
(SAS), and Side-Side-Side (SSS). In
taxicab geometry, however, only
SASAS guarantees triangle
congruence.[8]

Take, for example, two right isosceles

taxicab triangles whose angles measure
45-90-45. The two legs of both triangles
have taxilength 2, but the hypotenuses
are not congruent. This counterexample
eliminates AAS, ASA, and SAS. It also
eliminates AASS, AAAS, and even Two taxicab right isoceles triangles. Three angles and two legs are
ASASA. Having three congruent angles congruent, but the triangles are not congruent. Therefore, ASASA
and two sides does not guarantee is not a congruence theorem in taxicab geometry.
triangle congruence in taxicab geometry.
Therefore, the only triangle congruence
theorem in taxicab geometry is SASAS, where all three corresponding sides must be congruent and at least
two corresponding angles must be congruent.[9] This result is mainly due to the fact that the length of a line
segment depends on its orientation in taxicab geometry.

Applications

Compressed sensing

In solving an underdetermined system of linear equations, the regularization term for the parameter vector is
expressed in terms of the norm (taxicab geometry) of the vector.[10] This approach appears in the signal
recovery framework called compressed sensing.

Differences of frequency distributions

Taxicab geometry can be used to assess the differences in discrete frequency distributions. For example, in
RNA splicing positional distributions of hexamers, which plot the probability of each hexamer appearing at
each given nucleotide near a splice site, can be compared with L1-distance. Each position distribution can
be represented as a vector where each entry represents the likelihood of the hexamer starting at a certain
nucleotide. A large L1-distance between the two vectors indicates a significant difference in the nature of
the distributions while a small distance denotes similarly shaped distributions. This is equivalent to
measuring the area between the two distribution curves because the area of each segment is the absolute
difference between the two curves' likelihoods at that point. When summed together for all segments, it
provides the same measure as L1-distance.[11]

See also
Chebyshev distance – Mathematical metric
Fifteen puzzle – Sliding puzzle with fifteen pieces and one space
Hamming distance – Number of bits that differ between two strings
Manhattan wiring – circuit layout style in computer engineering
Mannheim distance
Metric – Mathematical space with a notion of distance
 Minkowski distance – Mathematical metric in normed vector space
Normed vector space – Vector space on which a distance is defined
Orthogonal convex hull – Minimal superset that intersects each axis-parallel line in an
interval
Random walk – Mathematical formalization of a path that consists of a succession of random
steps

External links
Krause, Eugene F. (1987). Taxicab Geometry (https://archive.org/details/taxicabgeometrya00
00krau). Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-25202-5.
Minkowski, Hermann (1910). Geometrie der Zahlen (https://archive.org/details/geometrieder
zahl00minkrich) (in German). Leipzig and Berlin: R. G. Teubner. JFM 41.0239.03 (https://zbm
ath.org/?format=complete&q=an:41.0239.03). MR 0249269 (https://mathscinet.ams.org/math
scinet-getitem?mr=0249269). Retrieved October 6, 2019.
Riesz, Frigyes (1910). "Untersuchungen über Systeme integrierbarer Funktionen" (https://ze
nodo.org/record/2456593). Mathematische Annalen (in German). 69 (4): 449–497.
doi:10.1007/BF01457637 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2FBF01457637).
hdl:10338.dmlcz/128558 (https://hdl.handle.net/10338.dmlcz%2F128558).
S2CID 120242933 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:120242933).
Weisstein, Eric W. "Taxicab Metric" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/TaxicabMetric.html).
MathWorld.
Malkevitch, Joe (October 1, 2007). "Taxi!" (http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-colum
n/fcarc-taxi). American Mathematical Society. Retrieved October 6, 2019.

References
1. Black, Paul E. "Manhattan distance" (https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/HTML/manhattanDistance.
html). Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
2. Stigler, Stephen M. (1986). The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before
1900 (https://archive.org/details/historyofstatist00stig). Harvard University Press.
ISBN 9780674403406. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
3. Heinbockel, J.H. (2012). Introduction to Calculus Volume II. Old Dominion University.
pp. 54–55.
4. Penot, J.P. (1988-01-01). "On the mean value theorem" (https://doi.org/10.1080/0233193880
8843330). Optimization. 19 (2): 147–156. doi:10.1080/02331938808843330 (https://doi.org/1
0.1080%2F02331938808843330). ISSN 0233-1934 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0233-19
34).
5. Petrovic, Maja; Malesevic, Branko; Banjac, Bojan; Obradovic, Ratko (2014-05-25).
"Geometry of some taxicab curves". arXiv:1405.7579 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7579)
[math.HO (https://arxiv.org/archive/math.HO)].
6. Kemp, Aubrey (2018-08-07). Generalizing and Transferring Mathematical Definitions from
Euclidean to Taxicab Geometry (https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/math_diss/58). Mathematics
Dissertations (Thesis). doi:10.57709/12521263 (https://doi.org/10.57709%2F12521263).
7. Thompson, Kevin P. (2011-01-14). "The Nature of Length, Area, and Volume in Taxicab
Geometry". arXiv:1101.2922 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2922) [math.MG (https://arxiv.org/arc
hive/math.MG)].
8. Mironychev, Alexander (2018). "SAS and SSA Conditions for Congruent Triangles". Journal
of Mathematics and System Science. 8 (2): 59–66.
 9. THOMPSON, KEVIN; DRAY, TEVIAN (2000). "Taxicab Angles and Trigonometry" (https://w
ww.jstor.org/stable/24340535). Pi Mu Epsilon Journal. 11 (2): 87–96. ISSN 0031-952X (http
s://www.worldcat.org/issn/0031-952X). JSTOR 24340535 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/24340
535).
10. Donoho, David L. (March 23, 2006). "For most large underdetermined systems of linear
equations the minimal -norm solution is also the sparsest solution". Communications on
Pure and Applied Mathematics. 59 (6): 797–829. doi:10.1002/cpa.20132 (https://doi.org/10.1
002%2Fcpa.20132). S2CID 8510060 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:8510060).
11. Lim, Kian Huat; Ferraris, Luciana; Filloux, Madeleine E.; Raphael, Benjamin J.; Fairbrother,
William G. (July 5, 2011). "Using positional distribution to identify splicing elements and
predict pre-mRNA processing defects in human genes" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar
ticles/PMC3131313). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America. 108 (27): 11093–11098. Bibcode:2011PNAS..10811093H (https://ui.adsabs.har
vard.edu/abs/2011PNAS..10811093H). doi:10.1073/pnas.1101135108 (https://doi.org/10.10
73%2Fpnas.1101135108). PMC 3131313 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3
131313). PMID 21685335 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21685335).

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