The diagram below shows a rectangle inside a regular hexagon. the apothem of the hexagon is 17.32 units. to the nearest square unit, what is the area of the shaded region?

Let's call the number "n"

if we write in an equation what you said it's like this:

n*2+4-n-3=n+1.

first i will move all the "n"s to the left and all the numbers to the right

n*2-n-n=1+3-4

which is

0=0

this means that for EVERY number, if you double it, add four, subtract three, you will get this number plus one.