Saturday, September 19, 2015

Precalculus, Chapter 10, 10.1, Section 10.1, Problem 74

The distance between a point and line will be measured by finding the segment that is perpendicular to the line and goes through the point. The formula to find this distance is:
"distance"(ax+by+c=0, (x1,y1))=|ax1+by1+c|/sqrt(a^2+b^2)
So, in our problem, we need to set the equation of our line equal to 0, so it ends up being -2x-6y-7=0
We can now plug our numbers into the equation as follows:
"distance"(-2x-6y-7=0, (-5,-3))=|-2(-5)-6(-3)-7|/sqrt((-2)^2+(-5)^2)
Which leaves us with an answer of 21/(2sqrt(10))~~3.32

No comments:

Post a Comment