Quote: The coordinates of three vertices of a triangle are (-1,-1),(5,-1),and (5,-4). What is the area of the triangle ?
at first I thought this was going to be a really neat problem but upon graphing the points it's pretty straightforward.
Plot the points. You see they all nicely line up with each other and form a right triangle.
The area of a right triangle is given by half the product of the two legs (the two short sides).
With a tiny bit of subtraction you can figure out the lengths of these two short sides.
Sketch the thing and I'm sure you can come up with the answer given that Area = 1/2 (leg1)(leg2)
+6251 
