Largësi

Largësi is a term used in Albanian to denote distance or separation between two points, objects, or moments within a defined space or frame of reference. In mathematics, science, and everyday language, largësi expresses how far apart things are and can be measured or described in various ways depending on the context.

In mathematics, largësi between points x and y in a space is a measure that assigns a nonnegative number to represent separation. The most common form is the Euclidean distance, given by the square root of the sum of squared coordinate differences: d(x,y) = sqrt((x1−y1)^2 + (x2−y2)^2 + ...). More generally, distance can be defined through norms and metric functions that satisfy non-negativity, identity of indiscernibles, symmetry, and the triangle inequality. Different metrics yield different notions of closeness, such as Manhattan distance (L1) or Chebyshev distance (L∞).

In discrete structures, largësi often refers to graph distance, defined as the length of the shortest path between two vertices. In physics and astronomy, largësi encompasses various distance concepts, including spatial separation between objects, light-year as a unit of astronomical distance, and specialized distances in cosmology such as luminosity distance and angular diameter distance.

In measurement practice, largësi is assessed with tools ranging from rulers and tapes to laser rangefinders, radar, and astrometric methods like parallax. It is also distinguished from gjerësia (width) in Albanian usage, where largësi emphasizes separation rather than breadth.

See also: distance, metric, geometry, graph theory, cosmology.