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The task of finding midpoints in multiple dimensional coordinate spaces is analogous to the similar task on the real line. For example, in 1-D, the midpoint of and is just ; generally, the midpoint of and is their average .
Similarly, in two dimensions, the midpoint is found by finding the average of the two points in each dimension. If point has x-coordinate and point has x-coordinate , then it stands to reason their midpoint would have x-coordinate . A similar line of reasoning holds for the y-coordinate.
Which of the following points is the midpoint of and ?
Of course, this extends to even more dimensions.
In general, the midpoint of and is as follows
.
What's really convenient here is that we didn't need to solve any equations to show it is the midpoint! For any two points , we've found a point lying on the segment , with (verify this last bit with the distance formula to convince yourself). We also know that the "midpoint" is the unique point satisfying these two conditions, so must be the midpoint! This strategy of "guessing" an answer that works and using uniqueness, implying your guess is the only possible correct answer, is a very powerful one.