If I were you, I would make the starting point (3,-6). From there, you will want to use the slope of -1/2 (go down 1 unit and to the right 2 units and draw a point)

4 0

3 years ago

Ginny is studying a population of frogs. She determines that the population is decreasing at an average rate of 3% per year. Whe

Rama09 [41]

You can see how this works by thinking through what's going on.

In the first year the population declines by 3%. So the population at the end of the first year is the starting population (1200) minus the decline: 1200 minus 3% of 1200. 3% of 1200 is the same as .03 * 1200. So the population at the end of the first year is 1200 - .03 * 1200. That can be written as 1200 * (1 - .03), or 1200 * 0.97

What about the second year? The population starts at 1200 * 0.97. It declines by 3% again. But 3% of what??? The decline is based on the population at the beginning of the year, NOT based no the original population. So the decline in the second year is 0.03 * (1200 * 0.97). And just as in the first year, the population at the end of the second year is the population at the beginning of the second year minus the decline in the second year. So that's 1200 * 0.97 - 0.03 * (1200 * 0.97), which is equal to 1200 * 0.97 (1 - 0.03) = 1200 * 0.97 * 0.97 = 1200 * 0.972.

So there's a pattern. If you worked out the third year, you'd see that the population ends up as 1200 * 0.973, and it would keep going like that.

So the population after x years is 1200 * 0.97x

5 0

3 years ago