Question

Is there a way to quickly find a function if you have a handful of ordered pairs?

ex. (-6, 10) (-4, 7) (-2, 4) (0, 3) (2, 0) (4, -3)

Answer 1

Plug into your calculator and Use linear regression

Answer 2

Yeah. You basically have to look at every x value and see if for every x value, is there ONLY one y-value. So in your example, it is a function because every x value has only one y value. Let’s say you had (1,3) and (1,5). That would not be a function because the x value of 1 has TWO y values (3 and 5), therefore it is not a function.

That’s how you can easily spot if something is a function by just looking at a handful of ordered pairs. I hope this makes sense.