Can you think of two different ways to find the slope, given a graph?
m=-8/10 or m=- 0.8
Practice makes perfect
Observing the given graph, we can see that the line passes through the points (0,16) and (10,8). One way to use a graph to find the slope of a line is to count out the change in x and y.
We can see that as the graph travels from left to right, the rise, or change in y, is - 8. Similarly, the run, or change in x, is 10.
slope=rise/run ⇔ m=- 8/10
We can confirm this answer by using the other method, the Slope Formula.
m = y_2-y_1/x_2-x_1
We will use the given points to solve for the slope.
A slope of m=- 810 means that for every 10 steps in the positive horizontal direction, the graph travels 8 steps in the negative vertical direction. Note that we can also express our answer as a decimal, m=- 0.8.
