Area of non-regular shape

To measure a non-regular shape on a grid, the idea is to overlay a mathematical

grid and then construct a polygon around the shape to approximate it. There are
various tools that can be used to do this - for these I chose to use Geogebra
because it's free and accessible to all of Andrew's millions of Estimation180 fans!
(1) Scale down your image to a good resolution for your screen - too high and it
looks messy when imported into Geogebra. I scaled these down to a height of
about 800 pixels or so, and 72 dpi.
(2) Create a new Geogebra document with a Graphics view. Show both the axes and
the grid.
(3) Under the Edit menu, insert an image from a file. The image appears overtop of
the grid and has 2 points at the base. Move these points to scale and rotate the
image as needed. You can simply click and drag anywhere on the image to move it
where you want it.
(4) Use the "Move Graphics View" tool (4-directional arrows icon) to adjust the axes
to match the grid of the image.
(5) Right-click on the image and select "ObjectProperties" Change it to a
background image.
(6) Hide the grid and axes (otherwise your points may snap to lattice points, which
isn't desired in this case).
(7) Use the Polygon tool to create a polygon that approximates the shape. Basically
it's tracing using segments, so your points will need to be close together to
approximate curves. Once done, you can adjust some points to get a better fit.
(8) Under the Edit menu, select "Object Properties". Select all of the points, and
then un-check "Show Object" - this will hide all of those unsightly points.
(9) Use the area tool to measure the polygon, then hide the result.
(10) Create a text box to display your calculation. You can type in the text part, and
reference the measurement by selecting 'poly1' from the 'Objects' pulldown menu.
(11) Change the size, etc. of the text. Show your axes and grid.
(12) Under the File menu you can export your creation as a picture.
I haven't tried this with students, but I think it would work quite well to have them
do it.
Marc Garneau