Hellen Keller was born in 1880. She was an American writer and lecturer. She was deaf and blind. Hellen was educated by Anne Mansfield Sullivan, the one who taught her to communicate by using sings. She became a famous author and the first blind-deaf person to have a college degree and such amount of prizes and recognition. She died at the age of 88 in 1968.
The main idea behind area model is to crack multiplication of 2 larger numbers in sum of several easier to calculate multiplications of smaller numbers. Each multiplication of those smaller numbers is represented by part of the area in the picture.
So, we can write down number 34 as sum of 30 and 4 and number 17 as sum of 10 and 7.
Going further we can write down:
34*17=(30+4)*(10*7)=30*10+30*7+4*10+4*7=578