The slope of a line is defined as the steepness, or rise over run. Finding what the slope of a line is, is quite simple.
Our first step for finding our slope, will be to have a graph with at least 2 coordinates.
Here we have quite a large slope, but the next simple thing to do is just to determine our points on the graph. As we can see our points are 2,2 and 30, 7.
what we can do now is just count how much it takes to rise and run.
In this case, it would take us 28 units to get to 30x from 2x so 28 would be our run. To get to 7y from 2y it takes us 5 units, so our rise over run slope will be 5/28.
For our next example, I will be using a different kind of slope: (-2,4) (5,4)
One may notice that something is different with this slope, because there is a point in the second quadrant, and this makes our slope a different value. That value will be negative.
All we do for this slope now is just count rise and run again. We can see that we have to rise 2 and run 7, but we are going towards the negative side of the x axis, so it will be -7. So our slope will be 2/-7.
A simple way to remember this rule is by using the “Mr. Slope face”
as you can see from the face the slope rising to the right, is positive and to the left is negative, and straight down is a undefined line, and this is a line where the x coordinate never changes, and there is no y intercept, and a line that is completely horizontal is 0 because there is no x intercept.
I chose this concept for my weekly blog post because I found it relatively easy to explain and I understood the concept fairly well, so I thought of making my blog post on it.