Three collinear points don't define a plane.
"Define" means narrow it down to one and only one unique plane, so that it can't be confused with any other one.
There are many different planes (actually infinite) that can contain three collinear points, so no unique plane is defined.
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No, they have to be noncolinear, that is they all can't be on the same line.
I dont think that "If four points are collinear they are also coplaner," is the same thing as "If four points are coplaner they are also collinear,". The definition of collinear is at least three points on the same line. To define a plane is to have threenoncollinear points.
To create a plane, infinitely many. But to uniquely define one, 3 are enough.
The points are collinear, and there is an infinite number of planes that contain a given line. A plane containing the line can be rotated about the line by any number of degrees to form an unlimited number of other planes.If, on the other hand, the points are not collinear, then the plane has no wriggle room: it is stuck fast in one place - there can be only one plane containing all the points. Provided they are non-colinear, three points will define a plane.
There are an infinite number of any kind of points in any plane. But once you have three ( 3 ) non-collinear points, you know exactly which plane they're in, because there's no other plane that contains the same three non-collinear points.