There are three things to prove here:
- the parametrization begins at $(x_1,y_1)$,
- the parametrization ends at $(x_2,y_2)$,
- the parametrization is a line segment.
The first two are easy to prove: we have $0 \leq t \leq 1$, so plug $t=0$ into the equations for $x$ and $y$. You should obtain $x = x_1$ and $y = y_1$, which gives us item #1 on our todo list. Do the same for $t=1$, and you'll get item #2.
The third requires a bit of algebra, and it must be kept in mind that $x_1,x_2,y_1,y_2$ are all constants, while $x,y$ are variables. Let us solve the $x$ equation for $t$: $ x = x_1 + (x_2 - x_1)t $ $ \frac{x - x_1}{x_2-x_1} = t $ Now, plug that into the $y$ equation: $ y = y_1 + (y_2-y_1)t $ $ y = y_1 + (y_2-y_1)\frac{x - x_1}{x_2-x_1} $
The goal here is to get it into the form $y = mx+b$, so the algebra will be focused on figuring out what's multiplying $x$ and what isn't. We'll start by breaking the fraction into two:
$ y = y_1 + (y_2-y_1)\frac{x}{x_2-x_1} + (y_2-y_1)\frac{- x_1}{x_2-x_1} $ Now, move the $y_1$ at the beginning to join it with the other stuff that does not depend on $x$: $ y = (y_2-y_1)\frac{x}{x_2-x_1} + y_1 - (y_2-y_1)\frac{x_1}{x_2-x_1} $ From here, we can see that we do have a line if we set $ m =\frac{y_2-y_1}{x_2-x_1} $ $ b = y_1 - (y_2-y_1)\frac{x_1}{x_2-x_1} $