Question

HELP PLEASE! I tried everything from multiplying, dividing, adding, and subtracting but still no correct answer. Can someone please help me out here?

Answer 1

Answer:  110 square miles

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Explanation:

There are a few ways to do this.  

One method involves drawing a horizontal line to form three rectangles as show below. Note the labels A,B,C.

• Rectangle A in the upper left corner has area of base*height = 6*7 = 42 square miles. I'll let A = 42 since we'll use it later.
• Rectangle B is 20 miles across horizontally (base) and 2 miles tall vertically (height). The 2 miles is from 9-7 = 2. The area of rectangle B is 20*2 = 40 square miles. Let B = 40.
• Then finally, C = 28 because rectangle C is 4 miles across and 7 miles tall, so 4*7 = 28.

Add up those three sub areas found: A+B+C = 42+40+28 = 110 square miles

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There are other methods you could do. A second method is to draw two vertical lines to form 3 other rectangles, then add up the sub areas to get 110.

A third method is to draw a horizontal line across the top to form one large rectangle (20 mi by 9 mi) and subtract off the area of the 7 mi by 10 mi inner rectangle (the empty space), so you'd say 20*9 - 7*10 = 180-70 = 110