Expert: Lynn Houston - 10/3/2010

Question
Sam has a wall that needs painting.  The wall is a rectangle 12 feet, 4 inches by 7 feet, 8 inches.  What is the area of the wall in square feet?

Answer
Convert the measurements to feet and then multiply.

4" = 4/12 = 1/3 = .333
8" = 8/12 = 2/3 = .666

You can carry out the decimal as far as you want, but I would recommend rounding at 2 places.

12.33 x 7.67 = 94.57sq ft

The other way you can do it is to convert each to inches, multiply and then divide by 144 (# of inches in a sq ft).

148 x 92 = 13616
13616/144 = 94.55sq ft

As you can see, they give you slightly different answers due to rounding