Dan and Susanne are best friends Susanne lives 3 miles west and 4 miles north of a park Dan lives 2 miles east and 5 miles south of the same park How far apart do they live from each other?

Answer 1

To get the correct answer of 10.3 miles, you can map these to Cartesian coordinates, where Susanne lives at (-3,4) and Dan lives at (2, -5).

The distances are 5 (E-W, or x) and 9 (N-S, or y)
D = sqrt (x2 + y2) = sqrt (25+ 81) = sqrt 106 = 10.3
If they did not live in diagonal quadrants, the distance is less than their combined distances from the park.