As a simple illustration, consider a group of shops in a city.
For most cities, the distance between points can be measured using the familiar Euclidean distance: \ell_2 = d\left[\left(a_1, a_2\right), \left(b_1, b_2\right)\right] = \sqrt{\left(a_1 - b_1\right)^2 + \left(a_2 - b_2\right)^2} or the Manhattan distance:d\left[\left(a_1, a_2\right), \left(b_1, b_2\right)\right] = \left|a_1 - b_1\right| + \left|a_2 - b_2\right|.