Main content
MAP Recommended Practice
Course: MAP Recommended Practice > Unit 19
Lesson 17: Intro to slope-intercept formIntro to slope-intercept form
Slope-intercept form (y=mx+b) of linear equations highlights the slope (m) and the y-intercept (b) of a line. Watch this video to learn more about it and see some examples.
Want to join the conversation?
- My teacher actually said something about "rise over run." Could you talk little bit more about it?(52 votes)
- rise/run is basically another term name for y/x because for the "y" axis it rises or goes up vertically and the "x" axis runs or goes across horizontaly.(90 votes)
- What is the difference between y=mx+c and y=mx+b?(17 votes)
- Nothing... They just use different variables for the y-intercept.(63 votes)
- I'm confused, by how did he got (y - 5) = 2 (x - 1) also can somebody reply quick because I'm just stuck right now(10 votes)
- He simply converted the same equation into point slope formula, the one that you are talking about, and standard formula, -2x+y=3. He talks about the topic more in depth later.
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:forms-of-linear-equations/x2f8bb11595b61c86:point-slope-form/v/idea-behind-point-slope-form
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x2f8bb11595b61c86:forms-of-linear-equations/x2f8bb11595b61c86:point-slope-form/v/point-slope-and-slope-intercept-form-from-two-points
Those to videos are about point slope. Check them out if you still want to find out more.
Hope this helps!(39 votes)
- I dont like this unit(16 votes)
- How many different way can you write an equation?(4 votes)
- Infinitely many. You can rewrite equations by performing algebraic manipulations, making sure you always do the same operation on both sides of the "=" sign. So you could add 1 to both sides, and now it's written a new way. Or add 2 to both sides, or add 9, or subtract 3.5, or multiply by 617.8, etc.(24 votes)
- i think my brain is broken i don't understand any of this(13 votes)
- Sometimes, I see slope intercept form written as "y=mx+a" instead of the typical y=mx+b. There are other variations of it like y=m(x-a). Could anyone articulate on this variation of slope intercept form?(7 votes)
- The forms y=mx+b and y=mx+a are essentially the same, except for the naming of the constant term. The form y=mx+b means slope m and y-intercept b; similarly, the form y=mx+a means slope m and y-intercept a.
The form y=m(x-a) is essentially different from the other two forms, and means slope m and x-intercept (instead of y-intercept) a.
Have a blessed, wonderful day!(14 votes)
- I read that y=m(x-a) is slope-intercept from, where m=slope and a=x-intercept. How do you derive that from the simpler slope-intercept form?(8 votes)
- As noted in your other post, rather than being derived from the slope intercept form, it is a variation of the point slope form, y - y1 = m(x-x1) where the point is (x1,y1) and the slope is m. Since the x intercept is where y = 0, the point would revert to (x1,0), thus reaching your form of y=m(x-x1), merely substituting a for x1 does not change the formula.(7 votes)
- what is the easiest way to memorize this concept?(4 votes)
- Slope is basically just rise/run or Y change over X change. If it is a positive line, you will have a positive slope. If the line is negative, you will have a negative slope.(14 votes)
- When I think about slope I only think about "rise over run."(7 votes)
- Well when Sal talks about the slope as 'm' he means that m = rise/run, so you're right!(5 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] There's
a lot of different ways that you could represent
a linear equation. So for example, if you
had the linear equation y is equal to 2x plus three, that's one way to represent it, but I could represent this in
an infinite number of ways. I could, let's see, I could subtract 2x from both sides, I could write this as negative 2x plus y is equal to three. I could manipulate it in
ways where I get it to, and I'm gonna do it right now, but this is another way of
writing that same thing. y minus five is equal to
two times x minus one. You could actually simplify this and you could get either
this equation here or that equation up on top. These are all equivalent,
you can get from one to the other with logical
algebraic operations. So there's an infinite number of ways to represent a given linear equation, but I what I wanna focus on in this video is this representation in particular, because this one is a
very useful representation of a linear equation and
we'll see in future videos, this one and this one can also be useful, depending on what you are looking for, but we're gonna focus on this one, and this one right over
here is often called slope-intercept form. Slope-intercept form. And hopefully in a few minutes, it will be obvious why it
called slop-intercept form. And before I explain that
to you, let's just try to graph this thing. I'm gonna try to graph it, I'm just gonna plot some points here, so x comma y, and I'm
gonna pick some x values where it's easy to calculate the y values. So maybe the easiest is
if x is equal to zero. If x is equal to zero, then
two times zero is zero, that term goes away, and
you're only left with this term right over here, y is equal to three. Y is equal to three. And so if we were to plot this. Actually let me start plotting it, so that is my y axis, and let me do the x axis, so that can be my x, oh that's not as straight as I would like it. So that looks pretty good, alright. That is my x axis and let me mark off some hash marks here,
so this is x equals one, x equals two, x equals three, this is y equals one, y equals two, y equals three, and obviously I could keep going and keep going, this would be
y is equal to negative one, this would be x is equal to negative one, negative two, negative three, so on and so forth. So this point right over
here, zero comma three, this is x is zero, y is three. Well, the point that represents
when x is equal to zero and y equals three, this is, we're right on the y axis. If they have a line going
through it and this line contains this point, this is
going to be the y- intercept. So one way to think about it,
the reason why this is called slope-intercept form is it's very easy to calculate the y-intercept. The y-intercept here is going to happen when it's written in this form, it's going to happen
when x is equal to zero and y is equal to three, it's gonna be this point right over here. So it's very easy to
figure out the intercept, the y-intercept from this form. Now you might be saying, well it says slope-intercept form, it must also be easy to figure out the slope from this form. And if you made that conclusion, you would be correct! And we're about to see
that in a few seconds. So let's plot some more points here and I'm just gonna keep
increasing x by one. So if you increase x by
one, so we could write that our delta x, our change
in x, delta Greek letter, this triangle is a Greek letter, delta, represents change in. Change in x here is one. We just increased x by
one, what's gonna be our corresponding change in y? What's going to be our change in y? So let's see, when x is equal to one, we have two times one, plus three is going to be five. So our change in y is going to be two. Let's do that again. Let's increase our x by one. Change in x is equal to one. So then if we're gonna increase by one, we're gonna go from x equals one to x equals two. Well what's our corresponding change in y? Well when x is equal to two, two times two is four,
plus three is seven. Well our change in y, our
change in y is equal to two. Went from five- when x went from one to two, y went from five to seven. So for every one that we increase x, y is increasing by two. So for this linear
equation, our change in y over change in x is always going to be, our change in y is two when
our change in x is one, or it's equal to two, or we could say that our
slope is equal to two. Well let's just graph this to make sure that we understand this. So when x equals one, y is equal to five. And actually we're gonna
have to graph five up here. So when x is equal to one, y is equal to, and actually this is a little bit higher, this, let me clean this up a little bit. So this one would be, erase that a little bit. Just like that. So that's y is equal to four, and this is y is equal to five. So when x is one, y is equal to five, so it's that point right over there. So our line is going to look- you only need two points to define a line, our line is going to like, let me do this in this
color right over here. Our line is going to look like, is going to look, is going to look something like, is going to look, let me see if I can, I didn't draw it completely at scale, but it's going to look
something like this. This is the line, this is the line, y is equal to 2x plus three. But we already figured out
that its slope is equal to two, when our change in x is one, when our change in x is
one, our change in y is two. If our change in x was negative one, if our change in x was negative one, our change in y is negative two. And you can see that,
if from zero we went, we went down one, if we
went to negative one, then what's our y going to be? Two times negative one is negative two plus three is one. So we see that, the point
negative one comma one is on the line as well. So the slope here, our
change in y over change in x, if we're going from between any two points on this line, is always going to be two. But where do you see two
in this original equation? Well you see the two right over here. And when you write something
in slop-intercept form, where you explicitly solve for y, y is equal to some constant
times x to the first power plus some other constant,
the second one is going to be your intercept, your y-intercept, or it's going to be a way to
figure out the y-intercept, the intercept itself is this
point, the point at which the line intercepts the y axis, and then this two is going
to represent your slope. And that makes sense because
every time you increase x by one, you're gonna
multiply that by two, so you're gonna increase y by two. So this is just a, kinda
of a get your feet wet with the idea of slope-intercept form, but you'll see, at least for
me, this is the easiest form for me to think about what the graph of something looks like, because if you were given another, if you were given another linear equation, let's say y is equal to negative x, negative x plus two. Well immediately you say, okay look, my yintercept is going to be the point zero comma two, so I'm
gonna intersect the y axis right at that point, and
then I have a slope of, the coefficient here is
really just negative one, so I have a slope of negative one. So as we increase x by one, we're gonna decrease y by one. Increase x by one, you're
gonna decrease y by one. If you increase x by two,
you're gonna decrease y by two. And so our line is gonna
look something like this. Let me see if I can draw
it relatively neatly. It's going to look something, I think I can do a little
bit better than that. It's 'cus my graph paper is hand drawn. It's not ideal, but I think you get, you get the point. It's gonna look something like that. So from slope-intercept form, very easy to figure out
what the y-intercept is, and very easy to figure out the slope. The slope here, slope
here is negative one. That's this negative one right over here, and the y-intercept, y-intercept is the point zero comma two, very easy to figure out 'cus essentially that gave you the information right there.