Question

Your teacher asked your class to describe a real world situation in which a y-intercept is 100 and the slope is 5. Your partner gave the following description: My younger brother originally had 100 small building blocks, but he has lost 5 of them every month since. What mistake did your partner make?

Answer 1

Answer:

If the brother loses 5 blocks every month, the slope would be -5 and not 5.

When the initial value is decreasing, the slope is negative.

Answer 2

He isn’t losing 5 blocks if the slope is 5. He would be gaining. So the mistake is having a negative slope opposed to a positive.