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How to Understand and then Forever Memorize the Midpoint Formula

In algebra we have many formulas to learn. But one problem is that those formulas are often hard to memorize. They are written with variables, and the variables frequently have subscripts, and the truth is that a lot of us don’t really understand what the formulas are saying or how they work. So of course that makes formulas difficult to memorize.

Enter the concept of “friendly formulas.” Friendly formulas are the very same formulas but written in a way that you can understand and therefore memorize much more easily. It’s an idea I have come up with through my many years of algebra tutoring, and idea is included in my Algebra Survival Guide, available through Amazon.com

In this post I describe the “friendly formula” for the midpoint formula.

So as a refresher, what is the midpoint formula all about?

Basically, it lets you find the midpoint of any line segment on the coordinate plane. Think of it this way. There’s some line segment on the coordinate plane called segment AB. That means that it has an endpoint at point A, another at point B. We are given the coordinate of points A and B. We want to find the coordinates of the point right in the middle of points A and B.

Now let’s make this idea easy. Suppose we focus only on the x-coordinates. Suppose the x-coordinate of point A is 2, and the x-coordinate of point B is 6. Ask yourself: what x-coordinate is perfectly in the middle of coordinates 2 and 6? It’s just like asking: what number is right in the middle of 2 and 6 on the number line? Well, wouldn’t that be 4, since 4 is two more than 2 and two less than 6? And indeed it is 4.

But notice that there’s another way to get 4, given the coordinates 2 and 6. We also could have just added 2 and 6 to get 8, and then divided 8 by 2, since 8 ÷ 2 = 4. In other words, we could have TAKEN the AVERAGE of the two x-coordinates, since taking an average of two numbers is adding them and dividing by two.

Could the midpoint formula actually be as easy as taking averages?!

Before we say yes, let’s test this idea for more complicated situations. We just saw that it works when both coordinates are positive. But suppose one coordinate is positive, the other negative. Let’s let one coordinate be
– 2, while the other is + 4. What number is right between those two coordinates on the number line? Well, the numbers are 6 apart, right? And half of 6 is 3, so we could just add 3 to – 2, and get + 1 as the point in between them. And we see that + 1 is three away from both – 2 and 4. But could we also get + 1 by averaging -2 and 4? Let’s try:
(- 2 + 4) / 2 = 2 / 2 = + 1. Averaging works again.

And finally, what about the case where both coordinates are negative? Suppose one coordinate is – 2, the other – 8. What number is right between those two numbers on the number line? Well, these numbers are also 6 apart, right? And half of 6 is 3, so we could just add 3 to – 8, and get – 5 as the middle. And we see that – 5 is three away from both – 8 and – 2. But can we also get – 5 by averaging – 8 and – 2? Let’s try: (- 8 + – 2) / 2 = – 10 / 2 = -5. Averaging worked here too!

Since the averaging process works for all three cases, this approach does works always, and in fact it is how the midpoint formula works.

The midpoint formula basically just averages the x-coordinates to get the x-coordinate of the midpoint. Then it averages the y-coordinates to get the y-coordinate of the midpoint.

So here is the “friendly formula” for the midpoint of any segment on the coordinate plane: Given a segment whose x- and y-coordinates are known,

MIDPOINT = (AVERAGE of x-coordinates, AVERAGE of y-coordinates)

And that’s all you have to memorize!