This week in Math 10, I have chosen to talk about interpreting function graphs.

As I’ve said in my last blog post, functions are special relations, written in the format: . This format is what is called function notation; that example would be written as with regular relation notation.

Interpreting functions is not much different to interpreting other relations. Here is a graph with the linear function

The Y axis (vertical axis) is written as and the X axis (horizontal axis) remains as X (or whatever the variable name is in your chosen function.)

Plotting on the graph remains the same; the black box on the line for instance represents the ordered pair (4, 8) but with function notation, it is written as

Graphs, naturally, can also have context applied to them. The example graph given, for example, could be depicting the temperature of an object that is warming up over time, with data lower than (the magenta dot) being irrelevant. With that context, the magenta dot could be called the starting temperature of this object, and if it were ice, the blue dot would represent the melting point into water.