Slope (Jump to: Lecture | Video )

Remember that Linear Equations can be graphed on a coordinate plane.

Below is an example of a linear equation that has been graphed:

Figure 1.

Slope
Slope describes how steep a line is. Rise = Vertical Change Run = Horizontal Change

To calculate slope, start by selecting two points on your graph. Here, we've selected (-2, 0) and (-1, 2).

Figure 2.

Here, our vertical change from point one to point two is positive 2, while our horizontal change is positive 1. Thus, we calculate our slope:

Figure 3.