MA, Stanford University
Teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area
Alissa is currently a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brightstorm users love her clear, concise explanations of tough concepts
If we want to find theslopeof a line and we have the equation, we can do so using one of the many methods forfinding the slope of a line from an equationFinding the slope of a line from an equation is an important skill and can involve using slope-intercept form orfinding two pointsto calculate it. An understanding of how towrite an equation in slope-intercept formis important.
When you're working with equations of lines there's lots of different forms that you might write an equation to describe the same line. The most often used form of equations for line is called the "Slope Intercept Form," and it looks like this y=mx+b. Be careful sometimes peoples b's looks like 6's so just be aware that if you see y=mx+ [IB] it's probably going to be a b and not a 6.
In this equation m stands for slope and it's kind of weird because slope doesn't start with the letter m you're just going to have to get used to that same thing with b, b stands for the y intercept even though y intercept has nothing to do with the letter b it's kind of tricky in that way. But this equations are going to show up really really often and when you write it y and x are going to stay as those variable letters, like your equation answer will look like y equals some number x plus or maybe minus it might be negative some number here. So this is again what's called the slope intercept form of the equation of a line and we call it that because it uses a slope and the intercept.
