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Equation of a line

Equation of a line

From the course: Test Prep: GRE

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Equation of a line

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- [Voiceover] So one of the basic things you're gonna have to deal with in coordinate geometry is figuring out how to deal with the equation of a line. So one way to think of this is if we have an equation with two variables like x + y = 3, we can graph it in the coordinate plane. Now, the way that we usually like to graph it is to set it up into y = mx + b formats. The reason for that is that if we look at an equation in this format, we know that the coefficient of x is the slope of the line and then the b is the y intercept of the line. The y intercept is where the line hits the y axis. So it's handy to do that, so let's do that here. We're gonna say that this equation, I'm gonna write it with y by itself on the left, with like a y=, it's gonna be y = 3 - x, subtract x from both sides to do that. And then since this equation over here has the x before the number. we're just gonna rewrite that as y = -x + 3. So this is a little easier to look at in terms of our graphing format. It's…

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