Glossary
slope
Slope is the steepness of a line: rise over run, or the change in y divided by the change in x. Two points (x₁,y₁) and (x₂,y₂) give (y₂−y₁)/(x₂−x₁).
Slope measures how steep a line is, as the ratio of its vertical change to its horizontal change — rise over run. Between the points (1, 2) and (4, 11) the rise is 9 and the run is 3, so the slope is 3: for every 1 step to the right, the line climbs 3.
The sign carries information. A positive slope rises left to right, a negative slope falls, a slope of zero is a flat horizontal line, and a vertical line has no slope at all — the run would be zero, and dividing by zero is undefined. A larger absolute value is steeper, so 5 is steeper than 1/2 in either direction.
On a graph, slope is the m in y = mx + b, where b is the y-intercept. Given two points, the formula is (y₂ − y₁)/(x₂ − x₁), and the order does not matter as long as you subtract in the same direction on both the top and the bottom — reversing one and not the other flips the sign and is the standard error. Slope questions usually come as a pair of points, a graph, or an equation to rearrange into slope-intercept form.
Taught in
Related terms
- ratio — A ratio compares two quantities by division — 3 to 4, 3:4 and 3/4 are the same ratio. It says how many of one thing there are for each of the other, not how many in total.
Source: Official ASVAB — subtest descriptions (what each subtest asks) and the CAT-ASVAB scored-question counts (accessed 2026-09)