Question 234479: What is the area of the triangle with vertices (1, 4), (3, 1) and (11, 1)?
Answer by Edwin McCravy(20056)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! What is the area of the triangle with vertices (1, 4), (3, 1) and (11, 1)?
The formula for the area of a triangle with vertices
( , ), ( , ), ( , )
is
The double bars around the determinant indicate
the absolute value of the determinant:
Just for fun, let's check by drawing the triangle:
Counting the units in the base of the triangle,
we see that the base is 8 units. Counting the units
in the altitude, or height, of the triangle, we
see that it is 3 units high. Therefore using the
basic formula for a triangle  .
Edwin
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