If given only the coordinates of the vertices, describe a process you could use to find the perimeter and area of a square.

Question

mathmate · Answer

Is this the complete question?
There are many factors involved depending on whether the sides of the square lie parallel to the axes.

anonymous · Answer

This is the complete question, it's short answer..

mathmate · Answer

The short answer is to find the length of a side, call it x, and multiply by itself to find the area, and multiply by 4 to find the perimeter.
However, in general, we do not know if two points are consecutive, or diagonal, so that involves a test as follows:
Find the lengths between any point A and B, and A and C  (A is the same point, B and C are different points).  The shorter of the lengths AB and AC is the length of the side.

mathmate · Answer

The distance between two points is given by:
$D=\sqrt{(x2-x1)^2+(y2-y1)^2}$

anonymous · Answer

Thank you so much! This is a short answer on a pretest and I had no idea..

mathmate · Answer

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