Thread: slope from points

What's the slope between points (5,3) and (-2,-3)?

Originally Posted by leandria817

What's the slope between points (5,3) and (-2,-3)?

Slope equals rise over run, or change in y divided by change in x.
It doesn't matter which point you subtract from which, but you always have to be consistent. For example, to find the change in y, you can take the y coordinate from the first point (3) and subtract the y coordinate from the second one (-3), and that gives you 6. To be consistent, for the change of x we have to take the x from the first point (5) and subtract the x from the second (-2) to get 7. Then slope = ychange/xchange = 6/7.

You could have taken the values from the second point minus the first, and that would just give you -6/-7 = 6/7, so the answer would be the same.