How do you apply the pythagorean theorem in word problems?

1 Answer
Jan 15, 2015

So when you have word problems, the most important thing to understand how to convert the words to mathematical models. Sometimes, it's difficult to visualize the question automatically, so it might help to underline any pieces of key information in the question, and then to draw out the problem (but don't make the drawing too complicated), and then label the numbers where needed. From there, you can apply the Pythagorean theorem and solve. Here is an example:

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