Question

one endpoint of the line segment is 8,-1. the point 5,-2 is 1/3 of the way from that endpoint to the other endpoint. find the other endpoint

Answer 1

Ok this is really tricky. But the way to figure this out to think kind of backwards about it. If the distance between the two points they give you is one third the distance of the whole segment, then the other endpoint is three times further away from the starting point.

Answer 2

The starting x value is 8, and we want to work backwards from that and go 3 times the distance. The points they give you look like this on a graph:

Answer 3

The difference in the x values is three units and the difference in the y values is 1. Here look:

Answer 4

So the way we figure this out is to take the starting x value of 8 and subtract 3 times the length of the x difference. I know it's confusing, but it's done like this: