# Given an arbitrary number of points, how do you find an equidistant center?

Given an arbitrary set of points on a Cartesian coordinate plane, is there a generalized formula to find the closest point that is equidistant from all the given points?

My first guess was finding the centroid, which is fairly easy to calculate, but the centroid of a polygon isn't equidistant from all its vertices.

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Consider the points (0,0), (1,1), (2,2), in the plane. No point is equidistant from these points. Have I missed something in the definitions? –  utdiscant Apr 11 '12 at 18:14
For an arbitrary set of points, it may not exist... –  Sasha Apr 11 '12 at 18:14
It is not clear to me what the point should do. Should it minimize the maximum distance? –  André Nicolas Apr 11 '12 at 18:15
So given some $\epsilon \gt 0$ and points $P_1, P_2, \dots P_n$, you want a point $P_{\epsilon}$ such that $|D(P_{\epsilon},P_i) - D(P_{\epsilon},P_j)| \lt \epsilon$, if it exists and then try to "minimize" $\epsilon$ and find a corresponding $P_{\epsilon}$? –  Aryabhata Apr 11 '12 at 18:16
Ah, I see. I didn't realize that it could be impossible to find an equidistant point... Aryabhata, that sounds about right. –  kennysong Apr 11 '12 at 18:16

There is no point that is equidistant from 4 or more points in general position in the plane, or $n+2$ points in $n$ dimensions.
The centroid is the point $C$ in the the plane for which the sum of squared distances $\sum |CP_i|^2$ is minimum. One could also optimize a different measure of centrality, or insist that the representative be one of the points (such as a graph-theoretic center of a weighted spanning tree), or assign weights to the points in some fashion and take the centroid of those.