Question

Given the function defined in the table below, find the average rate of change, in simplest form, of the function over the interval 2 ≤ x ≤ 6.

Answer 1

To find the average rate of change over an interval we need to calculate how much the function has changed over that interval by subtracting the final value by the initial one and dividing by the lenght of the interval. With this in mind we have:

$\begin{gathered} \text{rate}=\frac{19-13}{6-2} \\ \text{rate}=\frac{6}{4} \\ \text{rate}=1.5 \end{gathered}$

The average rate of change for this interval is 1.5