Answer:
The way that I solved this problem, is finding the area of the larger white square and subtracting it by the area of the smaller white squares. In order to find the area of the larger white square I need to find the length of at least one of its sides. From the diagram, we know that the length of the top side of the square next to the shaded square is 10, and since the length of all sides of a square are equal, the length of the right side must also be 10. With this information, we can add the lengths 10 and 16, to get that the length of the side of the larger white square is 26. Now we can square this number to find the area of the larger white square:
26^2 = 676
Now we use this same logic, to know that the area of the white square diagonal to the shaded square is 16^2 = 256. Again, we use the same logic to find that the area of the white square to the right of the shaded square is 10^2 = 100, and the area of the white square bottom to the shaded square is also 100. Now we add these numbers and subtract them from 676:
256 + 100 + 100 = 456
676 - 456 = 220.
So the area of the shaded square is 220.
