 Since squaring is a monotonic function of non-negative values, minimizing the SED is equivalent to minimizing the Euclidean distance, so the optimization problem is equivalent in terms of either, but easier to solve using the SED.If one of the points is fixed, the SED can be interpreted as a potential function, in which case a normalization factor of one half is used, and the sign may be switched, depending on convention.In detail, given two points formula_14, the vector formula_15 points from formula_16 to formula_17 and has magnitude proportional to their Euclidean distance.