Use these steps in order to find the slope of a line on a graph
1. Pick any 2 points on the line
2. Count the rise which is how many places the point is above or below the x axis.
If the point is above the X axis it is positive, below the X axis is negative
3. Count the run, which is how many places the point is from the y axis. If the point is to the right of the y axis it is positive and if it is to the left it is negative
4. Make a ratio
Find the slope of the line on a graph.
Take a Practice Quiz with answers explained with a video
Below is an interactive tool to help you learn slope. Use the "m" slider to change the slope and the "b" slider to change the intercept. Remember: y = mx + b is the equation of a line in slope intercept form.
When a line passes through the points (x1, y1) and (x 2, y 2) you can find the slope using:
=
Hi welcome to MooMooMath. Today we are going to look at the slope of a line graphically. Here is an example. We have two points on a line and we count up 2 and over 3 and my answer is 2/3. Now let’s look at the rules of finding the slope. The rules are you can pick any two points on that line. Next, count the rise, or how far I’m going up or down, and then I count my run, which is how many places left or right, and then I make a ratio of the rise over the run. So let’s look at our example again. We will place the rise over the run and I’m going to draw a right triangle created by how many I’m going up and how many I’m going across. So from point to point I’m moving up two units, bumping two units up, and how many units am I running, or going left to right? I’m going three units to the right. Now notice if I’m going up it is a positive and if I happen to go down it would be a negative. So in the example I’m moving to the right in a positive direction which becomes positive two over positive three which is 2/3 and that is my final answer. Now let’s look at an answer that might be a negative slope. What would happen if the two points create a line that is going down? The line moving down would be a negative slope. My rise would go down one so it would be negative one and my run is positive three. The slope of this line (rise over the run) would be -1 over 3 or -1/3 Hope this helps