How to find the area under this curve?

Question

anonymous · Answer

A bicyclist pedals along a straight road with velocity, v, given in the figure below. She starts 3 miles from a lake; positive velocities take her away from the lake and negative velocities take her toward the lake. http://i.imgur.com/lhJQd.png Approximately how far away is she at this time? Give a best estimate.

anonymous · Answer

The time is one hour...

anonymous · Answer

just count the number of squares

tkhunny · Answer

Please define "under".  That first 20 is troublesome.

anonymous · Answer

It includes both the negative and positive velocities, so not exactly under for both

anonymous · Answer

0 is the x axis of course

anonymous · Answer

They basically want you to count squares here.

anonymous · Answer

That seems too simple. What would be the units I would use?

anonymous · Answer

The count the number of square when it is above, and subtract from the the number of square when it is below.

anonymous · Answer

The square is  10mph  time is  1 h
So the result is 10 miles for each square

anonymous · Answer

Keep it simple, they asked for an approximation.

anonymous · Answer

What should I do for the squares that aren't whole?

anonymous · Answer

It seems a bit tricky go guess

anonymous · Answer

if you want to make it more complicated, then just roughly estimate how much of a square it is.

anonymous · Answer

Okay, I will try my best to approximate it. Thank you