Talk:Closest-pair problem

Since we only compare distances and the actual smallest distance never needs to be reported, could the calculation be sped up by not using a square root in the distance calculation? I'm not sure how the current examples are calculating the distance, but they may be optimized by calculating the square of the distance (d^2 = (x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2). I don't think there is any use for the actual distance anywhere in the pseudocode, but I may be wrong. --Mwn3d 19:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the actual distance is meant to be the result of the function. Still, that would let you optimize to reduce the number of square root operations performed. (I do question whether we're doing a “how fast can we go” exercise though; clarity is better here, yes?) — Dkf 21:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)