Question

Find the distance between the two points rounding to the nearest tenth (if necessary).

(-7, -8) and ( -4,0)

Answer 1

approximately 8.5

Explanation:

So you can use the distance formula:
`√((x_2-x_1)^2+(y_2-y_1)^2)\\` which is derived from the Pythagorean theorem because normally x2-x1 would kind of give the distance length between x2 and x1 except sometimes it would be negative which wouldn't make much sense right? but it doesn't matter because it's being squared so the value ultimately becomes positive, and the same thing goes for the y-value. the distance between x2 - x1 really represents the base and y2-y1 represents the height and then adding them together gives the hypotenuse squared which is why you take the square root over the entire thing to find the distance, since the hypotenuse is the shortest distance between two points

Now all you have to do is plug the values in to get

`√((-7 - (-4))^2 + (-8 - 0)^2)\\√((-3)^2 + (-8)^2)\\√(9 + 64)\\√(73)\\distance \approx 8.5`