MA, Stanford University
Teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area
Alissa is currently a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brightstorm users love her clear, concise explanations of tough concepts
Ordered pair, or coordinate points, are written as (x, y). When graphing a point on a coordinate plane, the "x" value tells you how many units to move horizontally, or side-to-side along the x-axis. The "y" value tells you how many units to move vertically, or up and down along the y-axis. The coordinate plane is divided into four quadrants by the x- and y-axes. The top right quadrant is the first quadrant. Moving in a counter-clockwise direction is the second, third and fourth quadrant.
Remember when you're graphing points that the x number comes first that tells you the side to side, the y number comes second it tells you the up and down. So here in this point (-2,-4) I know I have to go two in the negative x direction and then down four to represent four in the negative y direction.
So here we go, on my graph I'm going to go two in the negative x direction and then also four down because that's the negative y direction. There's my point (-2,-4) keeping in mind the x number is the horizontal change the side to side, the y is the up and down.
The problem also asks us tell it which quadrant it's in and we know it goes quadrant one, two, three and then four, it's kind of a clockwise thing. So we say the point is in quadrant III, write it using Roman numerals and there you go that's it. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of the positive negative and remembering that x comes first y comes second.
