Nowadays, unless a drawing is clearly distorted, students can assume all figures to be scale drawings. And from this can be inferred a tremendously helpful geometry strategy.
Based on the realism of figures drawn to scale, the notion that “seeing is believing” can be used to make good estimates helpful in answering even the most irksome questions.
For example: Angles that seem equal probably are equal. Lines look parallel? Call it true. If one segment appears to be slightly less than half the length of another, that can be assumed.
Known information in geometric figures can thus be used to “ball park” reasonable guesses about unknown information in the same figure, and this is often all it takes to find the correct answer or at least eliminate wildly incorrect ones.
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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.
