# Example: Sketching a Tangent to a point on a line and estimating its slope

Below, we have the line graphed for y = f(x),

a) Roughly sketch the tangent to the points x = 1 , x = 3 and x = 5

So, remember the tangent to a point on a line, is the straight line that intersects that point and runs at the slope that point is on,

Roughly sketching the line to the point x = 1 would give us,

For x = 3, it is slightly different, roughly, x = 3 looks like the point where the graphed line turns and starts to go in the other direction, so if you imagine what the tangent would be up until the point x = 3 and then what the tangent would be right after the point x = 3, the turning point at x = 3 would be roughly have the tangent halfway between the tangents before and after the point,

This would look like a straight line running parallel to the x - axis,

For x = 5, we have the line looking like it roughly runs in the opposite way it does at x = 1, draw the line for the tangent at the point x = 5

b) Roughly guess what the slope of that tangent would be

So, roughly guessing what the slope of the tangent would be at each point,

At x = 1, it roughly looks like the line of the tangent goes down one y-value for every one x - value,

Remember our slope (or gradient, m) =
change in y
change in x
So, the y-value change is -1, and the x-value change is 1, giving us a tangent slope of roughly,

-1
1
= -1

At x = 0, it roughly looks like the y-value does not go up or down, so the change would be 0, this tells us that no matter what the change in the x-value is, our slope for the tangent will be 0, as if the change in y = 0, then,

The change in y
The change in x
=
0
The change in x
= 0 (as 0 divided by anything is = 0)

For our last point, x = 3, the tangents slope seems to be opposite to what x = 1 is,

The y-value roughly goes up 1 for every x-value it goes right,

So,
the change in y
the change in x
=
1
1
= 1
{"found_math": false, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0}