Finding the difference between height and distance is a big topic of debate, but many mathematicians say that height and distance are the same thing. We've listed some of the differences between these two terms below, which show that they are not the same. First of all, height is also a type of distance, but it is a distance from the bottom to the top of something. You can also talk about how high something is from the bottom or the ground. Distance, on the other hand, is the amount of space between two things that can be shown on a map. Depending on the path you took, the distance between two things can be either straight or curved. Distance can be real or it can be a figure of speech. Like when two siblings live ten years apart.