One way is to use the rate of what you are calculating and multiply it by the time it takes. This distance formula is written as d=rt d = r t . The other way to calculate distance is to use the coordinate plane. This distance equation is written as d=√(x2−x1)2+(y2−y1)2 d = ( x 2 − x 1 ) 2 + ( y 2 − y 1 ) 2 .