The student is doing great so far. However, they forgot to take the square root of that result to get the final answer of [tex]\sqrt{61}[/tex]
The exact distance is [tex]\sqrt{61}[/tex] which approximates to roughly 7.81024967590666
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This is what the steps should look like
[tex]AB = \sqrt{ (6-1)^2 + (2-(-4))^2}\\\\AB = \sqrt{ (5)^2 + (6)^2}\\\\AB = \sqrt{ 25 + 36}\\\\AB = \sqrt{ 61} \ \ \text{ Exact distance}\\\\AB \approx 7.81024967590666 \ \ \text{ Approximate distance}\\\\[/tex]