DON’T JUST MEMORIZE—INTERNALIZE
The best scores go to the test takers who don’t just memorize methods and formulas but
who really understand the underlying math.Now look for the answer choice with the same slope. Conveniently, all the answer choices are
presented in slope-intercept form, so spotting the one with is a snap. The answer is (C).
People who are good at memorizing methods and formulas are not necessarily the ones who get the
best scores on Math 2. It’s people who have a deeper understanding of mathematics. If you really
want to ace coordinate geometry questions, it’s not enough to memorize the midpoint formula, the
distance formula, the slope definition, the slope-intercept form, and so on. What you want is to have
a real grasp of what slope is and what perpendicular, parallel, positive, negative, zero, and
undefined slopes tell you.
Slope is a description of the “steepness” of a line. Lines that go uphill (from left to right) have
positive slopes:
Lines that go downhill have negative slopes: