There are many ways to measure distance in math. Euclidean distance is one of them.
Given two points P1 and P2 the Euclidean distance ( in two dimensions, although the formula very easily generalizes to any number of dimensions) is as follows:
Let P1 have the coordiantes (x1, y1) and P2 be (x2, y2)
Then the Euclidean distance between them is the square root of
(x2-x1)2+(y2-y1)2 .
To understand some other ways of measuring "distance" I introduce the term
METRIC. A metric is a distance function. You put the points into the function (so they are its domain) and you get the distance as the output (so that is the range).
Another metric is the Taxicab Metric, formally known as the Minkowski distance.
We often use the small letter d to mean the distance between points.
So d(P1, P2) is the distance between points. Using the Taxicab Metric,
d(x, y) = |x1 - x2| + |y2 - y2|
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The difference (greater minus lesser) is the distance between them.
To find the distance between two integers using the difference, you simply subtract the smaller integer from the larger integer. The result will be the distance between the two integers on the number line. For example, if you have integers 7 and 3, you would subtract 3 from 7 to get a distance of 4. This method works because the difference between two integers gives you the number of units separating them on the number line.
In order to find the distance between two coordinates, you first need to find the difference between the x and y coordinates. In this case, the difference between the x coordinates is 3-(-2) = 5. The difference between the y coordinates is -4-5 = -9. To find the distance you add up the squares of these differences then find the square root. 52 = 25. -92 = 81. 25+81 = 106. Thus the distance is the square root of 106, or approximately 10.296
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In classical or Euclidean plane geometry two points defines exactly one line. On a sphere two points can define infinitely many lines only one of which will represent the shortest distance between the points. On other curved surfaces, or in non-Euclidean geometries, the number of lines determined by two points can vary. Even in the Euclidean plane, two points determine infinitely many lines that are not straight!