What are three ways to find the slope of a line?

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Answer 1 · 2015-04-10T13:38:07

Three ways to find the slope of a line:

You may have two points $(x_1,y_1)$ and $(x_2,y_2)$ (often one or both of these points may be intercepts of the $x$ and/or $y$ axes). The slope is given by the equation
$m=(y_2-y_1)/(x_2-x_1)$
You may have a linear equation that is either in the form or can be manipulated into the form
$y = mx + b$ .
In this case the slope is $m$ (the coefficient of $x$ ).
If the line is a tangent to another function, you may have (or be able to determine) the slope of the tangent as the derivative of the function. Normally in this case the derivative is a function expressed in terms of $x$ and you need to substitute the value of $x$ into this function for the required location.