Question

Write an equation in standard form for a line with an x-intercept of 2 and a y-intercept of 5.

I cannot find any examples of how to do this problem, all of the examples that I have show how to do it with a slope and point. Any help would be great!

Thanks.

Answer 1

You have two points given; they are (0,5) for the y intercept of 5 and (2,0) for the x intercept of 2. Find the slope from those two points and use the slope and point OR solve two simultaneous equations of the y = mx + b type.

Answer 2

x-intercept of 2 means that at
x = 2, y = 0. Note that the line y = 0 is the x-axis.

y-intercept of 5 means that at x = 0,
y = 5. Note that the line x = 0 is the y-axis.

So, you need to find the equation of the line that moves throuh the points (2,0) and (0,5)

You can do that by writing down the general equation of the lign and then solvong for the paramenters by demanding that it moves through these points. However, that's in general an inefficent way to solve the problem.

In this case, it is particularly easy to solve to solve the problem. You know that at x = 2, y = 0. That means that the function must be of the form:

y = A(x-2)

At x = 0, y = 5, so A = -5/2.