Mr Smith paid $30,000 for a rectangular lot 1,200 feet wide and 1,600 feet long. What is the approximate cost per square foot?

First, figure out its area.

A = LW
A = 1200 * 1600
A = 1,920,000 square feet

Take it from there.

The book says the answer is 1.6 cents... how?

30,000 / 1,920,000 = ?

To find the approximate cost per square foot, we need to divide the total cost by the total area of the rectangular lot.

First, let's calculate the area of the rectangular lot:
Area = Length * Width
Area = 1,200 feet * 1,600 feet
Area = 1,920,000 square feet

Next, we can find the cost per square foot by dividing the total cost by the total area:
Cost per square foot = Total cost / Total area
Cost per square foot = $30,000 / 1,920,000 square feet

To simplify the calculation, we can divide both the numerator and the denominator by a common factor, such as 10,000:
Cost per square foot = $30,000 / 192,000

To make the division easier, we can approximate the numerator and denominator:
Cost per square foot ≈ $0.15625 per square foot

Therefore, the approximate cost per square foot of the rectangular lot is approximately $0.16.