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How Do You Find Slope with Two Points, Given Their Coordinates and That the Line Passes Through Them?

Answer – The slope of a line passing through two given points can be calculated using the formula m = (y₂ − y₁) / (x₂ − x₁).

Explanation:

To calculate the slope of a line when given two points it passes through, we use the point-slope form of the equation of a straight line:

y₂ − y₁ = m (x₂ − x₁)

Where

y₂ is the y coordinate of the second point

y₁ is the y coordinate of the first point

m is the slope of the line

x₂ is the x coordinate of the second point

x₁ is the x coordinate of the first point

The above formula can be rearranged to get the formula for the slope:

m = (y₂ − y₁) / (x₂ − x₁)

Let’s consider an example to understand this better.

Assume that a straight line passes through two points with coordinates (10, 5) and (13, 8).

While applying the formula for the slope, any one of the two points can be considered as the first point and the other as the second.

So if we consider (10, 5) as (x₁, y₁) and (13, 8) as (x₂, y₂) and substitute them in the formula for the slope, we get:

m = (8 − 5) / (13 − 10)

m = 3 / 3

m = 1

Therefore, the slope of the line passing through the given points is 1.


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