Triangle Inequality

The triangle inequality states that the length of any side of a triangle is less than or equal to the sum of the lengths of the other two sides, with equality occurring only when the triangle degenerates to a line. In , this becomes

We can show this quickly using the Schwarz Inequality:

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written by Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.