How do you find the area of a triangle plot as point A = (-2,5); B = (12,3); C = (10,-11)?

1 Answer
Jul 9, 2015

I found 100100 units of area

Explanation:

There may be different ways to solve this but I thought of one that is quite intriguing:
Area=+-1/2|(x_1,y_1,1),(x_2,y_2,1),(x_3,y_3,1)|
i.e. 1/2 times the determinant formed using your coordinates and a column of 1 (the +- is to "correct" possible negative values).
So, in your case:
Area=+-1/2|(-2,5,1),(12,3,1),(10,-11,1)|=+-1/2(-200)=100 u.a.
"correcting" the minus sign.

The demonstration and reference of the above method can be found in:

Ron Larson - Elementary Linear Algebra 7th ed. 2013