How do you calculate total area?

For basic shapes like squares, rectangles and triangles, you can simply multiply the length and width to get the area. For example, if a rectangle has a length of 5 metres and a width of 3 metres, its total area would be 5 x 3 = 15 square metres.

For circles, the formula to use is πr2, where r is the radius. So, if a circle has a radius of 4 metres, its total area would be π x πr2 = 3.14 x 42 (16) = 50.24 square metres.

For complex shapes, you can break them down into smaller regular shapes like rectangles, squares, triangles, etc. Calculate each part separately and then add them together to find the total area. An alternative is to use graph paper to count the number of square units inside the shape's boundary and multiply that by the area of each square unit. Also, you can utilise an online area conversion calculator to calculate the total area.