Determining Intercepts and Slope

Today's lesson combines major points from lessons 4.3 and 4.4. Recall that you need only 2 points to graph a line. Knowing the x and y intercepts can make this an easy task. If the equation is in standard form ( ax + by = c ), then you can replace the x with a 0 to find the y intercept. Similarly, replacing y with a zero and solving the equation for x will give you the x intercept. If you know the coordinates of two points on a particular line, you can determine the slope of that line by using the formula m = ( y2 - y1 )/( x2 - x1 ). See lesson 4.4 for more information about the format of this formula, as it is hard to type it correctly on this blog.

Tonight's Homework: Lesson 4.3 ( 17 - 32, FCO and 35 - 40 ) and Lesson 4.4 ( calculate the slope for 20 - 34, even ). You don't have to graph the problems for lesson 4.4.