Answer:
The actual area of the town is 14 miles.
Step-by-step explanation:
Since you know that the scale is 1 inch:4 miles and that the map shows a town with an area of 3.5 inches, you can expressed this as follows:
Scale: 1 inch:4 miles
map area: 3.5 inches
If the actual area is x, you can say that:
3.5:x=1:4
This would be:
Now, you can solve for x:
x=(3.5*4)/1
x=14
According to this, the answer is that the actual area of the town is 14 miles.