The boat's velocity relative to the riverbank can be resolved into two components. the component going north is 2.7 m/s and the component going west is 1.2 m/s.we add these two vectors and then find the magnitude of the resultant to get the speed.the magnitude of the resultant vector from adding can be obtained by the pythagorean theorem.
![\begin{aligned} | \vec{v}| & = \sqrt{(\text{2.7 m/s})^2 + (\text{1.2 m/s})^2 } \\ & = 2.954 \text{ m/s} \end{aligned}](/tex.php?f=\begin{aligned} | \vec{v}| & = \sqrt{(\text{2.7 m/s})^2 + (\text{1.2 m/s})^2 } \\ & = 2.954 \text{ m/s} \end{aligned})
to two significant figures, the boat's speed relative to the riverbank is 3.0 m/s.