Video transcript
- [Voiceover] There'sa lot of different ways that you could representa linear equation. So for example, if youhad the linear equation y is equal to 2x plus three, that's one way to represent it, but I could represent this inan infinite number of ways. I could, let's see, I could subtract 2x from both sides, I could write this as negative 2x plus y is equal to three. I could manipulate it inways where I get it to, and I'm gonna do it right now, but this is another way ofwriting that same thing. y minus five is equal totwo times x minus one. You could actually simplify this and you could get eitherthis equation here or that equation up on top. These are all equivalent,you can get from one to the other with logicalalgebraic operations. So there's an infinite number of ways to represent a given linear equation, but I what I wanna focus on in this video is this representation in particular, because this one is avery useful representation of a linear equation andwe'll see in future videos, this one and this one can also be useful, depending on what you are looking for, but we're gonna focus on this one, and this one right overhere is often called slope-intercept form. Slope-intercept form. And hopefully in a few minutes, it will be obvious why itcalled slop-intercept form. And before I explain thatto you, let's just try to graph this thing. I'm gonna try to graph it, I'm just gonna plot some points here, so x comma y, and I'mgonna pick some x values where it's easy to calculate the y values. So maybe the easiest isif x is equal to zero. If x is equal to zero, thentwo times zero is zero, that term goes away, andyou're only left with this term right over here, y is equal to three. Y is equal to three. And so if we were to plot this. Actually let me start plotting it, so that is my y axis, and let me do the x axis, so that can be my x, oh that's not as straight as I would like it. So that looks pretty good, alright. That is my x axis and let me mark off some hash marks here,so this is x equals one, x equals two, x equals three, this is y equals one, y equals two, y equals three, and obviously I could keep going and keep going, this would bey is equal to negative one, this would be x is equal to negative one, negative two, negative three, so on and so forth. So this point right overhere, zero comma three, this is x is zero, y is three. Well, the point that representswhen x is equal to zero and y equals three, this is, we're right on the y axis. If they have a line goingthrough it and this line contains this point, this isgoing to be the y- intercept. So one way to think about it,the reason why this is called slope-intercept form is it's very easy to calculate the y-intercept. The y-intercept here is going to happen when it's written in this form, it's going to happenwhen x is equal to zero and y is equal to three, it's gonna be this point right over here. So it's very easy tofigure out the intercept, the y-intercept from this form. Now you might be saying, well it says slope-intercept form, it must also be easy to figure out the slope from this form. And if you made that conclusion, you would be correct! And we're about to seethat in a few seconds. So let's plot some more points here and I'm just gonna keepincreasing x by one. So if you increase x byone, so we could write that our delta x, our changein x, delta Greek letter, this triangle is a Greek letter, delta, represents change in. Change in x here is one. We just increased x byone, what's gonna be our corresponding change in y? What's going to be our change in y? So let's see, when x is equal to one, we have two times one, plus three is going to be five. So our change in y is going to be two. Let's do that again. Let's increase our x by one. Change in x is equal to one. So then if we're gonna increase by one, we're gonna go from x equals one to x equals two. Well what's our corresponding change in y? Well when x is equal to two, two times two is four,plus three is seven. Well our change in y, ourchange in y is equal to two. Went from five- when x went from one to two, y went from five to seven. So for every one that we increase x, y is increasing by two. So for this linearequation, our change in y over change in x is always going to be, our change in y is two whenour change in x is one, or it's equal to two, or we could say that ourslope is equal to two. Well let's just graph this to make sure that we understand this. So when x equals one, y is equal to five. And actually we're gonnahave to graph five up here. So when x is equal to one, y is equal to, and actually this is a little bit higher, this, let me clean this up a little bit. So this one would be, erase that a little bit. Just like that. So that's y is equal to four, and this is y is equal to five. So when x is one, y is equal to five, so it's that point right over there. So our line is going to look- you only need two points to define a line, our line is going to like, let me do this in thiscolor right over here. Our line is going to look like, is going to look, is going to look something like, is going to look, let me see if I can, I didn't draw it completely at scale, but it's going to looksomething like this. This is the line, this is the line, y is equal to 2x plus three. But we already figured outthat its slope is equal to two, when our change in x is one, when our change in x isone, our change in y is two. If our change in x was negative one, if our change in x was negative one, our change in y is negative two. And you can see that,if from zero we went, we went down one, if wewent to negative one, then what's our y going to be? Two times negative one is negative two plus three is one. So we see that, the pointnegative one comma one is on the line as well. So the slope here, ourchange in y over change in x, if we're going from between any two points on this line, is always going to be two. But where do you see twoin this original equation? Well you see the two right over here. And when you write somethingin slop-intercept form, where you explicitly solve for y, y is equal to some constanttimes x to the first power plus some other constant,the second one is going to be your intercept, your y-intercept, or it's going to be a way tofigure out the y-intercept, the intercept itself is thispoint, the point at which the line intercepts the y axis, and then this two is goingto represent your slope. And that makes sense becauseevery time you increase x by one, you're gonnamultiply that by two, so you're gonna increase y by two. So this is just a, kindaof a get your feet wet with the idea of slope-intercept form, but you'll see, at least forme, this is the easiest form for me to think about what the graph of something looks like, because if you were given another, if you were given another linear equation, let's say y is equal to negative x, negative x plus two. Well immediately you say, okay look, my yintercept is going to be the point zero comma two, so I'mgonna intersect the y axis right at that point, andthen I have a slope of, the coefficient here isreally just negative one, so I have a slope of negative one. So as we increase x by one, we're gonna decrease y by one. Increase x by one, you'regonna decrease y by one. If you increase x by two,you're gonna decrease y by two. And so our line is gonnalook something like this. Let me see if I can drawit relatively neatly. It's going to look something, I think I can do a littlebit better than that. It's 'cus my graph paper is hand drawn. It's not ideal, but I think you get, you get the point. It's gonna look something like that. So from slope-intercept form, very easy to figure outwhat the y-intercept is, and very easy to figure out the slope. The slope here, slopehere is negative one. That's this negative one right over here, and the y-intercept, y-intercept is the point zero comma two, very easy to figure out 'cus essentially that gave you the information right there.
