Find slope of given thing.Should be easy.

king65hi

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Apr 19, 2012
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Given y=5-2x
A) Find slope of given line.
B)Find slope of parallel line.

I just cant figure it out.
 
Given y=5-2x
A) Find slope of given line.
B)Find slope of parallel line.

I just cant figure it out.
Are you saying that you do not know what "slope" means? If so then before any "figuring" you ought to re-read your text book on that subject. If necessary, look "slope" up in the index of the book.

The slope of a line is the tangent of the angle the line makes with the x-axis or any horizontal line. Of course, "tangent" is "near side divided by opposite side" which here means "vertical divided by horizontal" which in turn means "difference in y values divided by difference in x values".

So one way to find the slope is to use two points on the line. If x= 0 , y= 5- 2(0)= 5 and if x= 1, y= 5- 2(1)= 3. So the slope is \(\displaystyle \frac{1- 3}{1-0}= -2.

But, in fact, if you do that same calculation for any straight line y= ax+ b, you will find that the slope is just "a". That is, if a line is written in the form y= ax+ b, its slope is the coefficent of x.

If two lines are parallel, they make the same angle with any horizontal line and so have the same slope.\)
 
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