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For pairs of objects that are not both points, the distance can most simply be defined as the smallest distance between any two points from the two objects, although more complicated generalizations from points to sets such as Hausdorff distance are also commonly used. [6] Formulas for computing distances between different types of objects include:
The distance travelled by an object is the length of a specific path travelled between two points, [6] such as the distance walked while navigating a maze. This can even be a closed distance along a closed curve which starts and ends at the same point, such as a ball thrown straight up, or the Earth when it completes one orbit .
The closest pair of points problem or closest pair problem is a problem of computational geometry: given points in metric space, find a pair of points with the smallest distance between them. The closest pair problem for points in the Euclidean plane [ 1 ] was among the first geometric problems that were treated at the origins of the systematic ...
The distance (or perpendicular distance) from a point to a line is the shortest distance from a fixed point to any point on a fixed infinite line in Euclidean geometry. It is the length of the line segment which joins the point to the line and is perpendicular to the line. The formula for calculating it can be derived and expressed in several ways.
In statistics, probability theory, and information theory, a statistical distance quantifies the distance between two statistical objects, which can be two random variables, or two probability distributions or samples, or the distance can be between an individual sample point and a population or a wider sample of points.
Distance measures are used in physical cosmology to give a natural notion of the distance between two objects or events in the universe.They are often used to tie some observable quantity (such as the luminosity of a distant quasar, the redshift of a distant galaxy, or the angular size of the acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum) to another quantity that is ...
The Hausdorff distance is the longest distance someone can be forced to travel by an adversary who chooses a point in one of the two sets, from where they then must travel to the other set. In other words, it is the greatest of all the distances from a point in one set to the closest point in the other set.
The objects may be geometric shapes or physical particles with well-defined boundaries. The distance of closest approach is sometimes referred to as the contact distance. For the simplest objects, spheres, the distance of closest approach is simply the sum of their radii. For non-spherical objects, the distance of closest approach is a function ...