Taxicab Geometry

Taxicab Geometry

Taxicab Geometry was first introduced by Hermann Minkowski in the 19th century. Minkowski was born on June 22, 1864 in Aleksotas, Lithuania of German, Polish, and Jewish decent. One of his most famous students was Albert Einstein, known for his theory of relativity. Throughout his life, Minkowski explored the number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity.

Taxicab geometry is quite easy to understand since it is very close to Euclidean geometry in its axiomatic structure. Points, lines and angles are measured the same as in Euclidean geometry, but distances are measured differently. This form of geometry uses the Cartesian coordinate system to measure the distance between two points by the sum of the absolute difference in their coordinates. The taxicab distance is also known as the Manhattan distance and city block distance. The distance is called Manhattan because the city blocks are laid out similar to the Cartesian coordinate system.

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