Inactive Tutor answered 12/30/13
Tutor
New to Wyzant
You can't talk about graphing until you understand what a function is. I can tell you don't understand this because you said "I don't know what to do with the 10".
y = 5x + 10 expresses y as a FUNCTION of x.
That is, given a value of x I have a formula to get a value for y. You could also write this function as
f(x) = 5x + 10
So when x is 0, then the formula gives the value of y as 5*0+10 which is 10; and when x is 1, the formula gives the value of y as 5*1 + 10 which is 15.
For each value of x, the function formula gives a value of y. you can make a table:
X Y
0 10
1 15
-1 5
2 20
-2 0
Then to graph the function, you need to plot these points (0,10), (1,15), (-1,5), (2,20),(-2,10) on graph paper.