How do you graph y=5x-5/2 using slope and intercept?

1 Answer
Feb 16, 2018

See below.

Explanation:

Use the general equation of a line:

color(red)(y=mx+b)

Here, m is the slope of the line. It states that, for every change in the x coordinate by 1 unit, the y coordinate changes by m units. Its formula is:

(y_2-y_1)/(x_2-x_1).

Here, m=5.

b is the y-intercept, the value of y when the line intercepts the y axis. Here, the b=-5/2

Through the observations above, we find that:

  • The line gets to x=0 at y=-5/2
  • After that, for every 1 unit increase in the x value, the y value increases by 5 units.

So at x=0, y=-5/2

At x=1, y=5/2

At x=2, y=15/2

At x=3, y=25/2

And so on and so forth. We can use Socratic's graphing utility to make sure of so:

graph{5x-5/2 [-10, 10, -5, 5]}

We can see that our observations are true.