a group of students went on a hike.

Question

a group of students went on a hike. first they walked 1 km east, then 2km south, then 3km west. then 1 km north and finally 2 km east before stopping for a rest. how far are they from their starting postion?

Answer 1

Think of a graph, where (0,0) is the starting point. After walking east, they are at (1,0). Then they walked south to (1, -2). From there they went west to (-2, -2), north to (-2, -1) and finally east to (0, -1). So they ended up 1 km directly south of their starting position.