Question

What is the slope of the line that passes through the points (2, 8) and (6, 12)? A. –5 B. –1 C. 1 D. 5

Answer 1

The slope is an expression of the change in y after a change in x.
Usually, this is expressed with a ratio, with the difference in y first.

The formula for slope is written as $m=\frac{y_2-y_1}{x_2-x_1}$.
Our points are $(x_1,\ y_1)$ and $(x_2,\ y_2)$.

Of course, the difference is just subtracting one from the other, but you'll get either a positive or negative value depending on which way you subtract. That's all fine and dandy if you handle the differences in x and y in the same way like in the formula, because any unwanted negatives get cancelled out...it's not important.

Anyways, let's plug our points (2, 8) and (6, 12) into the slope formula.

$\frac{12-8}{6-2}=\frac{4}{4}=\frac{1}{1}$

Any number divided by 1 stays the same, so we can leave out the /1 and just have our slope be 1.