nearest neighbor in 2D

[Andrew Dalke]

Ron Adam
> for point in p:
>     distance = math.sqrt((new_point[0]-point[0])**2 \
>                          +(new_point[1]-point[1])**2)

> I really don't know how you can make this faster.  There might be a
> library that has a distance between two points function that could
> speed it up.

An easy way is to move the math.sqrt call outside the loop, since
 sqrt(d1) < sqrt(d2) iff d1 < d2 (when d1,d2>=0)

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com