Question

A small business earns a profit of $6,500 in January and $17,500 in May. What is the rate of change in profit for this time period?

Answer 1

Answer:
Rate of change of profit for this period = $2750 / month

Explanation:
In this problem we have two values:
1- the value of the month : this would be our independent variable (x) as it does not depend on any other variable
2- the profit for each month: this would be our dependent variable (y) as it depends on the month (x)

We know that January is the first month of the year (1) while May is the fifth (5)

We are given that:
profit was $6500 in January. This would be represented as (1,6500)
profit was $17500 in May. This would be represented as (5,17500)

Now, we would get the rate of change using the following rule:
rate of change = $\frac{ y_{2} - y_{1} }{ x_{2} - x_{1}}$

Substitute with the given values:
rate of change = $\frac{17500-6500}{5-1} = 2750$

Hope this helps :)