This week in Math 10 we learned how to calculate slopes using a formula. The slope formula is always going to be: \frac{y_2-y_1}{x_2-x_1} . It really doesn’t matter which number you choose to represent each variable as long as you keep it consistant throughout. It’s important to remember that each point is an actual point on a graph so one point has to have one x coordinate and one y coordinate. I usually choose to make the first points x_1 and y_1 and the second point x_2 and y_2. In this example I made (-3 = x_1), (8 = y_1), (7 = x_2) and (-2 = y_2). Once you’ve marked each of the numbers you just replace the variables with the numbers you’ve selected into the equation. For this example it should look like this: \frac{-2-8}{7- -3} . Next we do the subtractions or additions to make it easier to read and end up with \frac{-10}{10} which simplifies to -1, and that’s our answer. The formula is pretty easy one you get the hang of it because you just replace x and y by numbers. An important thing to remember about slopes is that a negative slope is one that goes down or to the left and a positive slope is up and to the right!