Asked by Jane

What is the length of a segment whose endpoints are (5, -8) and (9,2). Please explain to me what the formula or rules for working this problem.
Answered by Steve
think of the line segment as the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Then the legs have length (9-5)=4 and (2-(-8))=10.

So the length of the line segment is sqrt(4^2 + 10^2) = 10.77