Question

What is the distance between the points M (-3, 7) and N (a, b)?

Answer 1

Answer:   $\sqrt{ (-3-a)^2 + (7-b)^2 }$

Explanation:

We plug the given coordinates into the distance formula

$d = \sqrt{ (x_1-x_2)^2 + (y_1-y_2)^2 }$

There isn't much we can do from there since we don't know the values of 'a' or 'b'. You could expand out each binomial, but it's more simplified being factored like that.