The basic geometric idea is the same as it was in the previous lab: impose a grid on the region and count the number of boxes falling within the region. As the grid becomes finer and finer, the area of the boxes within the region will typically approach the actual area of the region.
We illustrate this geometric picture by formulating a model for the state
of Minnesota. First, you must read in some Maple commands:
read `/u/calcIII/MVCalc.define`;
(Note that those are backticks, at the upper left corner of the keyboard, and NOT the single quotes by the enter key.)
We model the state of Minnesota as the region enclosed by its east and west borders (approximated by a set of data points connected by linear segments) and its north and south borders (approximated by straight lines).
MNgridplot(10,10);