[ More of Trapezoid Week! Here we make finding the area simpler by doubling the number of trapezoids on the screen. ]
Figuring out the area of a trapezoid based on making it the difference between two triangles works all right. “All right” carries with it a sense of inadequacy. The complaints against it are pretty basic. The first is that it doesn’t work for everything which might be called a trapezoid. Maybe we don’t want to consider parallelograms and rectangles to be particular kinds of trapezoids, but, why rule them out if we don’t have to? The second point is the proof is a little convoluted, requiring us to break out of thinking about trapezoids to remember details of similar triangles. It’d be nice if we had a more direct way of proving things.
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