At the beginning of this week in pre calc 11 we learned about Vertex/Standard form. This is personally my favourite form because it provides more information about us graphing the quadratic function than the quadratic or factored forms give us.

Vertex/Standard form looks like this:

$y=a(x-p)^2+q$

This form provides you with the following information about a parabola:

a:

1- tells us whether a parabola is opening up or down. If it’s a positive # than it’s opening up, and if it’s a negative # than it’s opening down or being “reflected”.

2- determines the size of our parabola, whether it is stretched or compressed. If a is greater than one then the parabola is stretched, if a is less than one then the parabola is compressed.

p:

1- tells us the horizontal translation of a parabola (whether the vertex is moving left or right).

2 – tells us what our line of symmetry is.

q:

1- tells us the vertical translation of a parabola (whether the vertex is moving up or down).

p & q:

1- the p and q are very important becuase they let us know our vertex *the vertex is the most important part of any parabola. The p tells us our x co-ordinate and the q tells us our y co-ordinate for when we are graphing a quadratic function.