Slope-Intercept Form

Topics for Today:

One of the most recognizable forms of a line is the slope-intercept form.  This line form is very useful because it's easy to visualize the actual line simply by looking at the equation.  From slope-intercept form, you can tell if the slope is positive or negative, and if the slope is steep or shallow, and also it demonstrates where the line crosses the y-axis (this is the y-intercept).

We talked about what an intercept is (this word sounds an awful lot like intersect!).

I reminded students of our work on solving literal equations - this skill will be especially helpful for our unit on linear equations, as we'll be looking at three different forms for a linear equation.  To put a line in slope-intercept form, simply solve for the variable "y".

Slope intercept form looks like this:  y=mx + b

• m is the slope
• b is the y-intercept 

Vocabulary: linear equation, y-intercept, slope-intercept form

Sections Covered in Textbook:

6-2: Slope-Intercept Form (pages 291-296)

Resources & Tutorials:

1) What is a linear equation?
2) What is the y-intercept?
3) What is the slope-intercept form of a line?

4) Slope-Intercept Form Class Notes