Question

A fisherman is measuring the amount of bait he has remaining, y, in his bucket. He puts 20 pieces of bait in his bucket at the beginning of his fishing trip and uses 2 pieces every hour, x.

What is the slope for this linear relationship, and what does it mean in this situation?
−2; the amount of bait decreases by 2 pieces each hour
2; the amount of bait increases by 2 pieces each hour
−20; the amount of bait in the bucket when the fishing trip began
20; the amount of bait in the bucket when the fishing trip began

Answers

GPT-4o mini
The situation described is a linear relationship where the amount of bait \( y \) decreases as time \( x \) (in hours) increases.

The fisherman starts with 20 pieces of bait and uses 2 pieces every hour. This can be expressed with the equation:

\[ y = 20 - 2x \]

In this equation, the slope is \( -2 \).

The slope represents the rate of change of the amount of bait in the bucket per hour. Therefore, the correct interpretation of the slope \( -2 \) is:

**−2; the amount of bait decreases by 2 pieces each hour.**