Say the base length is 8, and the height is 8. If you multiply it by 1/4, the new base length is 2. The formula for the area of a triangle is: A=1/2bh you take 1/2 of 2, which is 1, and you multiply by the height (8) to get 8 square units for the area. This is opposed to if you simply did the formula without multiplying by 1/4. If you avoided multiplying by 1/4, you would get A=(4)(8), which would get you 32 square inches for the area. So, in conclusion, multiplying the base by 1/4, gets you 1/4 the area.
