Steven D'Aprano schreef: > On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:11:28 +0100, Roel Schroeven wrote: > >> Steven D'Aprano schreef: >>> On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:59:59 +0100, Robert Bossy wrote: >>> >>>> Gabriel Genellina wrote: >>>>> That's what I said in another paragraph. "sum of coordinates" is >>>>> using a different distance definition; it's the way you measure >>>>> distance in a city with square blocks. I don't know if the distance >>>>> itself has a name, but >>>> I think it is called Manhattan distance in reference of the walking >>>> distance from one point to another in this city. >>> You know, there are other cities than Manhattan. Some of them even have >>> streets and blocks. >> I'm not sure what your point is. The name > > "The" name? You go on to list four additional names, so why do you say > that "Manhattan distance" is THE name? When I studied this at university, > we called it the taxi metric. > > >> of the distance happens to be >> Manhattan distance (or taxicab distance, rectilinear distance, L1 >> distance, city block distance; see >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_distance) so Robert has a valid >> point. > > Wikipedia doesn't believe that M-D is the primary or most common name, > and the link you give redirects to "Taxicab distance". Googlefight > agrees: "Taxicab distance" is more than twice as common, and "rectilinear > distance" more than five times as common. > > My point was to draw attention to Robert's unconscious assumptions which > are reflected in his choice of language. Rectilinear distance applies to > more than "distance from one point to another in THIS city" (emphasis > added).
You can hardly blame that on Robert. It's true that Manhattan distance is not the only name and not even the most popular one, but it's also true that it's a valid name, and that Robert didn't invent it, he merely used an existing name. > It applies in parts of Rome, Sydney, London, Moscow and many other > places. It even applies to sleepy little country towns like Bendigo and > Mildura here in Australia. Manhattan is hardly the only place where > cities are carved up into rectangular or square city blocks, and I doubt > that it applies to the entirety of Manhattan. No, but it's actually very close. I just looked at the places you mention in Google Earth; while they do have sections with rectangular layouts, in none of them it is as prevalent and obvious as in Manhattan (Manhattan isn't a city of course like the other ones, it's only a part of New York). Now of course it's true that there are many other places with checker board layouts, but I still don't think that makes Manhattan distance a bad name. > The very name is New York-centric, just as much as if the English called > the science of acoustics "Big-Ben-onics" in reference to the peals of Big > Ben's clock. I had thought I had pointed that out with a little gentle > understatement. I'm absolutely not USA/America/New York centric myself, but Manhattan simply is a good and well-known example of a checker board layout. There are worse examples of bad names: 'French fries' for example is French-centric, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the name is simply wrong because fries are Belgian (which is disputed, but I believe it since I'm from Belgium ;) ). But I'm still not going the call them freedom fries or anything. In any case, I replied because your reaction didn't feel all that gentle to me; to be honest, it felt rather rude. I apologize for interpreting the tone incorrectly. -- The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. -- Isaac Asimov Roel Schroeven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list