Question

Write a program that reads two points on a line, calculates the slope, and determines

whether the slope is positive, negative, zero, or undefined. Run your program for the
following pairs of points:
a. (-2, 1) and (2, 3)
b. (4, 1) and (4,3)

Answer 1

The program calculates the slope of a line between two points. For (-2, 1) and (2, 3), it is positive at 0.5. For (4, 1) and (4, 3), the slope is undefined due to a vertical line.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question involves writing a program to calculate the slope of a line and determine its nature based on two given points. To find the slope, you designate one point as the starting point and the other as the end point and calculate the 'rise over run', which is the difference in the y-values over the difference in the x-values.

For the points (-2, 1) and (2, 3), the slope calculation is ((3 - 1) / (2 - (-2))) = 2 / 4 = 0.5, indicating a positive slope.

For the second pair (4, 1) and (4, 3), the calculation is (3 - 1) / (4 - 4), which results in division by zero, thus the line has an undefined slope.

A positive slope implies the line rises as x increases, while an undefined slope represents a vertical line.