Question

What is the area of the composite figure whose vertices have the following coordinates?

(−4, 3) , (2, 3) , (4, −1) , (0, −3) , (−2, −1)

Answer 1

check the picture below.

notice, the composite is just a parallelogram, in blue, with a base of 6 units and a height of 4 units, and a triangle, in yellow, of a base of 6 units and a height of 2 units.

recall the area of a parallelogram is base*height, and for a triangle is (1/2)bh.

so, we can simply get the area of both and sum them up.


`\bf \stackrel{parallelogram}{6\cdot 4}~~+~~\stackrel{triangle}{\cfrac{1}{2}(6)(2)}`