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 Originally Posted by supa
So I'm in one of those unfortunate circumstances of being a dad trying to help his son with math but have never taken any upper level math classes. I'm pretty good at figuring a lot of stuff out if I understand what we're trying to accomplish, but I need something tangible to go by.
Basically I'm just trying to figure out what slope refers to in a math equation. Is it just the fact that when you put coordinates on a graph it creates a sloped line?
What the hell does m represent?
I can copy/paste the actual problem we're working on but I'm more looking for a way to understand it, not the actual answer.
It's rise over run.
The line is defined by an equation y=mx+b
The equation just says that for all x values, this will be your y-value. Then you pick any old x-value, and it will yield you a y.
So for an x value of 0, you will have y = b where b is the y-intercept.
For x = 1, y = (rise/run)*1 + y-intercept
Slope speaks of the rate of change of the value of y with respect to x. So if your slope is m=2, then for every change in x of +1, there will be a change in y of +2.
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