Equation Intercepts

The x- and y-intercepts of a line, or linear equation intercepts, are often used in problems involving lines and their graphs. Linear equation intercepts are important points to be able to understand and decipher in applications of linear equations problems and can also be used when graphing lines. The y-intercept is used when writing an equation in slope-intercept form.

X and Y intercepts are extremely important in your study of math. Before you can get into a good depth of algebra, you really need to understand the ideas of X and Y intercepts and how to find them both from a graph and from an equation.

So what I have here is just like a really rough graph. I just drew a line up there. There's no numbers or anything. But what I wanted to show you is that when you're looking at a graph, you can find the Y intercept by looking on the Y axis and seeing where your line crosses it. That's the Y intercept. And the X intercept is here. It's where your graph crosses the X axis. I'm using int to abbreviate for intercept.

When you think about the coordinates of this, on your Y intercept, it's going to be 0 for X, because I'm going 0 side to side and then I'm going up some number Y. I don't know what that number is on this particular graph. But your Y intercept is always when X is equal to 0. So if all you had was an equation you would substitute X equals 0 in order to find your Y intercept.

Similarly, the value of the coordinates of the X intercept are going to be some X value comma 0 for Y. So if I have an equation and I'm asked to find the X intercept, I would plug in Y equals 0.

Before I leave you guys, I want to tell you about one of the tricks with intercepts is remembering that to find the X intercept you'll get Y equals 0. To find the Y intercept you'll get X equals 0. It's kind of tricky but if you can keep it straight in your head I think you'll do fine on these problems.