Dear friends, Please read our latest blog post for an important announcement about the website. ❤, The Socratic Team

# How do I graph straight lines in Socratic?

## How can I graph straight lines in Socratic graphing utility? By straight lines I mean functions like $y = a$ and $x = a$ for real values of $a$.

Then teach the underlying concepts
Don't copy without citing sources
preview
?

#### Explanation

Explain in detail...

#### Explanation:

I want someone to double check my answer

3
Feb 2, 2018

Play around with the value of the slope.

#### Explanation:

You can find an explanation of how to graph vertical lines in this Socratic answer.

The same approach can be used to graph horizontal lines, only this time, the slope must be a really small number. For example, you can go with $0.001$ as a slope and graph the line

$y = 3$

by writing

y = 0.001x + 3 $\text{ }$ or simply $\text{ }$ 0.001x + 3

in the graphing utility.

graph{y = 0.001x + 3 [-10, 10, -5, 5]}

To graph

$y = - 3$

you can write

y = 0.001x - 3 $\text{ }$ or simply $\text{ }$ 0.001x - 3

graph{y = 0.001x - 3 [-10, 10, -5, 5]}

Not ideal, but it gets the job done.

$\textcolor{w h i t e}{\frac{a}{a}}$

As it turns out, you can graph a horizontal line by using zero as the slope. This wasn't possible a while ago--or at least that's what I remember--but you can do it now.

So to graph

$y = - 3$

you can write

y = 0x - 3 $\text{ }$ or simply $\text{ }$ 0x - 3

graph{y=0x-3 [-10, 10, -5, 5]}

• 54 minutes ago
• An hour ago
• An hour ago
• An hour ago
• 10 minutes ago
• 20 minutes ago
• 41 minutes ago
• 43 minutes ago
• 49 minutes ago
• 52 minutes ago
• 54 minutes ago
• An hour ago
• An hour ago
• An hour ago