Slope is thus an important concept but should already be familiar. Perpendicular lines have slopes which are negative reciprocals. This should be well studied in Algebra, so only a quick review is presented in today's activity. It is important to understand the difference between positive , negative , zero , and undefined slopes , and that is also covered in today's activity. If the slope is negative, y decreases as x increase and the function runs downhill.
Vertical lines are problematic in that there is no change in x .
Thus our formula is undefined due to division by zero. Hence the rather confusing term no slope is also in common usage for this situation. A term is a part of an expression which is added or subtracted. Quadratic functions are polynomials with degree two and will be explored below. The degree of a polynomial is the maximum number of variables which are factors in any one term.