Geometry: Slope perameter??

Question

What is a slope perameter???

Answer 1

The slope parameter is the part of a function that describes a straight line in a Cartesian plane.

Simply, a Cartesian plane is a grid where you have values of X up and down, and values of Y right and left.  

A single point on this grid is defined as (X,Y); for example, (5,2) is the point where X=5 (five up from 0) and Y=2 (two right from 0).

If you can picture the below ascii, you see the X values up the left side, the Y values along the bottom, and the * at (5,2)

6

5  *

4

3

2

1

01234567

Using this system of coordinates, a straight line can be defined by a function X = (Slope * Y) + Elevation.

For example, X= (2*Y) +0 defines the line that crosses the following points: (X,Y)

(0,0), (1,2), (2,4) ... etc.

6  *

5

4 *

3

2*

1

0123456

So the Slope Parameter is the multiplier of Y in relation to X in the equation of a line.  It literally defines how 'steep' the 'slope' of the line is.

BTW, the Elevation parameter is the point at which the line crosses the X axis (or where x=0)  So you can have a bunch of lines with the same slope (or angle) but that are higher or lower than each other by changing their elevation.