How does a positive slope differ from a negative slope?

1 Answer
Dec 17, 2014

The slope is a number that tells you how much y changes when x changes.
For example: a slope of 5 means that for each change in x of 1 unit (for example between 6 and 7) the correspondig y changes of 5 units.
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This is for a positive slope, so that your value of y is getting...bigger!!!

The negative slope is the opposite, it tells you of how much y decreases for each increas of 1 unit in x.
A slope of -5 tells you that the value of y decreases of 5 units in the 1 unit interval of x:
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As you may guess the slope is a measure of the "inclination" of your line!!!

Try to guess what a slope of zero means!!!!!!