Step-by-step explanation:
It came from nowhere. It makes no sense to add up the balance numbers. To illustrate, let's use a different example:
Adding up the money you spent, and you get $500. Add up the balances, and you get $1000. But why would you add the balances? The 300 in the second line is included in the 400 in the first line. You can't add them together. You'd be counting the 300 twice.
Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
No direction or other information about the desired parallelogram is given here, so we drew one arbitrarily. Likewise for the segment cutting it in half. It is convenient to have the bases of the trapezoids be the sides of the parallelogram that are 5 units apart.
The area of one trapezoid is ...
A = (1/2)(b1 +b2)h = (1/2)(3+5)·5 = 20 . . . . square units
The sum of the trapezoid base lengths is necessarily the length of the base of the parallelogram, so the area of the trapezoid is necessarily 1/2 the area of the parallelogram. (The area is necessarily half the area of the parallelogram also because the problem has us divide the parallelogram into two identical parts.)
