Question

Cat Years 1 3 4 6 7
Human Years 13 33 43 63 73

What is the meaning of the slope?
Write the slope-intercept form of the equation for the line of fit.
Use linear interpolation and your line of fit to estimate the number of human years which will correspond to 5 cat years

Answer 1

Joshua, it's always easiest to draw yourself a graph so you can understand the question.

a)
Set y as cat years, and x as human years. You should have a straight line when you're finished, on a diagonal. Any idea what the slope means now?


b)
Determine your slope using

slope = (change in x)/(change in y)

Then determine your intercept using

intercept = y - x*slope

Then you can plug your values into y = mx + b (where m = slope and b = intercept)

c)
For this last part you can draw a line across from y = 5 (5 cat years) until it hits your graph. Then draw a line straight down from that point until it hits the x axis. Wherever it lands is how many corresponding human years.