Question

The distance between two points on a coordinate plane can always be found by subtracting their x- or y-coordinates. True or false.

Answer 1

False

Explanation:

you can do subtracting but their are other methods.

Answer 2

This one's a tricky one. Subtracting the respective coordinates is the first step. But that in itself doesn't give the distance; there's some squaring and adding and square rooting to do. I'm going to go with

Answer: false

Rather than worry about this confusing question, let's review the distance formula. I find it easier to think of as the Pythagorean theorem. The distance r between points (a,b) and (c,d) satisfies

`r^2 = (a-c)^2 + (b - d)^2`

When I'm doing math I usually try to avoid taking a square root. But if we're asked directly for the distance, it's often unavoidable:

`r = √((a-c)^2 +(b-d)^2)`