Abstract: We study the embedding dimension of distance comparison data in two settings: contrastive learning and $k$-nearest neighbors ($k$-NN). In both cases, the goal is to find the smallest dimension $d$ of an $\ell_p$-space in which a given dataset can be represented. We show that the arboricity of the associated graphs plays a key role in designing embeddings. Using this approach, for the most frequently used $\ell_2$-distance, we get matching upper and lower bounds in both settings. In contrastive learning, we are given $m$ labeled samples of the form $(x_i, y_i^+, z_i^-)$ representing the fact that the positive example $y_i$ is closer to the anchor $x_i$ than the negative example $z_i$. We show that for representing such dataset in:- $\ell_2$: $d = \Theta(\sqrt{m})$ is necessary and sufficient.- $\ell_p$ for $p \ge 1$: $d = O(m)$ is sufficient and $d = \tilde \Omega(\sqrt{m})$ is necessary.- $\ell_\infty$: $d = O(m^{2/3})$ is sufficient and $d = \tilde \Omega(\sqrt{m})$ is necessary.We also give results for the more general scenario when $t$ negatives are allowed.In $k$-NN, for each of the $n$ data points we are given an ordered set of the closest $k$ points. We show that for preserving the ordering of the $k$-NN for every point in:- $\ell_2$: $d = \Theta(k)$ is necessary and sufficient.- $\ell_p$ for $p \ge 1$: $d = \tilde O(k^2)$ is sufficient and $d=\tilde \Omega(k)$ is necessary.- $\ell_\infty$ : $d = \tilde \Omega(k)$ is necessary.Furthermore, if the goal is to not just preserve the ordering of the $k$-NN but also keep them as the nearest neighbors then $d = \tilde O (\mathrm{poly}(k))$ suffices in $\ell_p$ for $p \ge 1$.