When you hear the term “slope” what comes to mind? Do you think of someone skiing down a large mountain? Or, do you think of the slide at the playground? Regardless of what you are thinking, it is likely going to be something on an incline. When you study slope in Algebra, you are studying the incline along with other characteristics of a line.
Learning the proper way to calculate slope is a simple process when you know exactly what the “slope” means. In a nutshell, the slope of any line is the change in the y-values versus the change in the x-values.
When you begin calculating slope, you may find the process a bit confusing because lines are given in several different forms. For example, you can calculate the slope from the graph of a line, equation of a line, table of points to the line or when you are given any two points on a line.