By observing x on the graph, then we make the connection that the slope of x on the graph represents rate of change of the linear function.

Once we have done this, it is then possible to move to the development of a quadratic equation and see what the impact of the increase (or perhaps decrease) means to the data. Have we proven that the rate of change is linear? The graphical representation of the data may be misleading, so it would be good to be able to calculate the rate of change to see if it is significant.

We could assign to value of L1 to the year in which the students are enrolled collect this data in columnar form, still graphing it on our graph. We would then call L2 the number of students enrolled every year which corresponds to the year we have listed in L1. In...
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