Area of the triangle

CJam, 18 16 bytes

T(f.-~(+.*:-z.5*

Try it online in the CJam interpreter.

Idea

As mentioned on Wikipedia, the area of the triangle [[0 0] [x y] [z w]] can be calculated as |det([[x y] [z w]])| / 2 = |xw-yz| / 2.

For a generic triangle [[a b] [c d] [e f]], we can translate its first vertex to the origin, thus obtaining the triangle [[0 0] [c-a d-b] [e-a f-b]], whose area can be calculated by the above formula.

Code

T                  e# Push T.
                   e# [[a b] [c d] [e f]]
   (               e# Shift out the first pair.
                   e# [[c d] [e f]] [a b]
    f.-            e# For [c d] and [e f], perform vectorized
                   e# subtraction with [a b].
                   e# [[c-a d-b] [e-a f-b]]
       ~           e# Dump the array on the stack.
                   e# [c-a d-b] [e-a f-b]
        (+         e# Shift and append. Rotates the second array.
                   e# [c-a d-b] [f-b e-a]
          .*       e# Vectorized product.
                   e# [(c-a)(f-b) (d-b)(e-a)]
            :-     e# Reduce by subtraction.
                   e# (c-a)(f-b) - (d-b)(e-a)
              z    e# Apply absolute value.
                   e# |(c-a)(f-b) - (d-b)(e-a)|
               .5* e# Multiply by 0.5.
                   e# |(c-a)(f-b) - (d-b)(e-a)| / 2

JavaScript (ES6) 42 .44.

Edit Input format changed, I can save 2 bytes

An anonymous function that take the array as a parameter and returns the calculated value.

(a,b,c,d,e,f)=>(a*(d-f)+c*(f-b)+e*(b-d))/2

Test running the snippet below in an EcmaScript 6 compliant browser.

f=(a,b,c,d,e,f)=>(a*(d-f)+c*(f-b)+e*(b-d))/2

function test()
{
  var v=I.value.match(/\d+/g)
  I.value = v
  R.innerHTML=f(...v)
}

<input id=I onchange="test()"><button onclick="test()">-></button><span id=R></span>

Mathematica, 27 bytes

Area@Polygon@Partition[t,2]