From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Area of a triangle

Area of a triangle

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Area of a triangle

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- [Instructor] So the formula for the area of a triangle is pretty quick and easy to explain, it's just one half base times height. In this video, I'll explain an example or two of how the GMAT might present triangle area, and maybe show you how it might be a little bit more challenging sometimes. So if I just had a triangle here, and I call this side the base, it doesn't really matter which side I pick, but typically it's the side that's horizontal, then the height is going to be this line, the key is, and I'll just label that, that is the height of the triangle, also known as the altitude, but the key thing to note is that the base and the height have to be at a right angle to each other. Great, so let's say I knew that the height was six and the base was 12, I would do one half base times height to get the area. So that would be one half six times 12. If I do that math, six times 12 is 72, times one half is 36. Okay, fine, but what if we had kind of a funky looking triangle? What…

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