A key concept in math and the economy is something called pending. We can find it in the representation of the equations and it determines the inclination of the straight with respect to the coordinate axes. In this article you will understand its importance, use, and how to calculate the slope of a line.
What is a slope?
In short, the pending is a numerical calculation that indicates whether a line moves up or down. AND how steep the straight is.
Now in economics, understanding the slope and what the line looks like is very important. This is so because to help make the material and concepts easier to understand, we use images and graphics.
So basically the slope tells you whether a line is moving up or down and the degree of steepness that slope has. So think of this as a hill. The slope will tell you whether you are going up or down a hill. And how steep that hill is.
How do we use the slope?
The next step is to understand how the slope is used and why it is important to calculate it. As I just mentioned, it tells you whether a line is moving up or down and how steep it is.
By looking at the value of the slope, you can immediately tell whether that line is going up or down. How?.
- If the slope is a positive number, then the line moves up.
- If the slope is a negative number, then the line moves down.
And the higher that number, the steeper the line.
So a slope of 4 means that the line goes up. But a slope of -4 means that the line is moving downward. And a line with a slope of 3 is steeper than a line with a slope of 2.
Part 1
Lines are made up of individual points. And each point has an X-axis value and a Y-axis value. The X-axis is horizontal (from left and right) and the Y-axis is vertical (from bottom to top).
For example, (3,5). This means that we have an X-axis value of 3 and a Y-axis value of 5. Y tells us that this point is 3 to the right and 5 above.
Point (1,6) is 1 to the right and 6 up. So think of points as street addresses. The lines would be a whole street with a lot of houses (points).
Part 2
Well, we’ve finally reached the point where you can really start working with the numbers to get the value of the slope.
We take two points, you look at them, and you see how much space there is between the two Y axes.
For example, suppose we have the points (1,2) and (3,5). Our two Y-axis values are 2 and 5. Remember, the Y-axis values are the numbers on the right, the X-axis values are the numbers on the left.
How far apart are the 2 points from Y? Simple, subtract 5-2 = 3 We call the result, Elevation.
Part 3
Our next step is to get the distance between our X-axis values. This difference is called Advance.
Continuing with our previous example, we look at our two points (1,2) and (3,5) to see what the values of the X axis are. Here we have 1 and 3.
And just like we did when the Elevation, we subtract. 3-1 = 2 this gives us our Advance.
Then:
- Elevation is the difference between the two Y axes
- Advance is the difference between the two X axes
Part 4
This is our last step to calculate the slope of a line.
All we do is divide the Elevation for him Advance. Using the example, divide 3 by 2, which gives us a slope of 1.5.
And what does this tell you?
- We know that our line is moving upward because the slope is positive.
- We know that it is a steeper slope than a line with a slope of 1. However, it is not as steep as a slope of 2.
Slope formula
This is the mathematical formula to calculate the slope, given two points.
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