McGraw Hill Glencoe Algebra 2, 2012
MH
McGraw Hill Glencoe Algebra 2, 2012 View details
3. Rate of Change and Slope
Continue to next subchapter

Exercise 1 Page 79

Can you identify a pattern of change between each row in the table?

6feet/min

Practice makes perfect

To determine the rate of change in the given table, let's see if we can identify a pattern of change between each row. Note that "time" is the independent variable, usually represented by x, and "distance" is the dependent variable, usually expressed by y.

Change in x Time (min) Distance (ft) Change in y
2 12
+2 ↪ 4 24 +12 ↩
+2 ↪ 6 36 +12 ↩
+2 ↪ 8 48 +12 ↩
+2 ↪ 10 60 +12 ↩
Rate of change is defined as the change in dependent variable over the change in independent variable. rate of change=Change in y/Change in x Looking at the patterns of change in the table, we see that every time x increases by 2, y increases by 12. We can substitute these values into the equation to obtain the rate of change.
rate of change=Change in y/Change in x
rate of change=12/2
â–Ľ
Simplify
rate of change=6/1
rate of change=6
The rate of change is 6feet/min.