affiliate

by the looks of it, this cat already has a scratching board that it very much enjoys

yeah exactly. i understand it as follows:

• in the manhattan metric, points have length one if the lengths of their coordinates sum to 1. so you get the points (1, 0), (0, 1), (-1, 0), and (-1, -1). and then you connect these four points with straight lines to get the diamond shape. this follows from the observation that if the x coordinate decreases in length by 0.1, then the y coordinate must increase in length by 0.1.
• in the euclidean metric, the points of length one lie on the unit circle, since x^2^ + y^2^ = 1 is the equation defining the unit circle.
• in the chebyshev metric, points have length 1 if one of the coordinates has length 1 and the other coordinates have a length smaller (or equal to) 1. and these conditions also describe the square with sides x = ± 1 and y = ± 1.

i think that’s a good point and that is a nice way to remember them. i think a lot of it just comes down to personal preference.

i like calling them the diamond/square/circle metrics because those shapes describe the sets of points that have unit length. i’ve found this wikipedia picture to be very helpful, and the diamond/square/circle terminology is my way of paying my respects to the picture.

i wish that it was more common to refer to the metrics in terms of what they are instead of who discovered them. i can’t ever remember off the top of my head if the chebyshev one is supposed to be the diamond metric (L^1^) or the square metric (L^∞^).

my condolences to your kitchen floor and kitchen counter. they are in for a rather unpleasant surprise

i didn’t check the community before opening and was getting ready to prepare myself for a moldy orange picture. very pleasantly surprised to see such a handsome boy instead