Dus deze lijn hier, is wat we beschouwen als " De " afstand tussen A en BC. Je kunt zien dat dit de kortste afstand is, als je hem vergelijkt met een willekeurig ander punt op de lijn. Kies een willekeurig punt op deze lijn. Bijvoorbeeld punt E hier. Dit is compleet willekeurig.
And the way that we think about this, and we're going to do this in much more depth in future math courses especially when you start vectors and linear algebra and all the rest, is distance between a point and a line is really the shortest distance and that shortest distance is as if you were to drop a perpendicular from that point to the line, so this right over here, this right over here, is what we call the distance the distance between the point and the line, and this is perpendicular right over here, to recognize that this is indeed the shortest distance think about this relative - the distance between this point and any other point on this line. so pick another point on this line right over here, let's call this point E, and think about this -- now this is an arbitrary point I could have drawn E here,QED QED