Graphing Equations for Dummies

This graph doesn't look linear, Linda!

You may think that the phrase "begs the question" means "begs that the question be asked," but you'd be wrong. To beg the question, although commonly used to mean "raises the question," really refers to circular reasoning: the speaker simply answers a question by restating it. Along with dodging a question and answering a different question, begging the question is a favorite rhetorical technique in politics. It's also commonly used by freelancers who are out of their depth or simply lousy writers looking to pad out an answer to meet some word count. Take, for example, eHow.com's Linda Donahue, whom we came upon attempting to explain "How to Find the Intercepts of the Graph of the Equation."¹

As is common in the Demand Media world, the question is... well, rather stupid, or at best badly worded. But that doesn't mean that the answer should also be stupid (or badly worded). What the eighth-grader who originally typed this question into a Google search box really wanted to know was, "How do I find the intercepts of an equation so I can graph it." Linda, however, couldn't figure that out. That's why she began her instructions with

"Graph your equation."

No duh: we have someone who needs the intercepts so he or she can graph an equation, and Donahue tells 'em to graph it to find the intercept. There you are, folks: a classic example of begging the question! Never mind that Linda almost immediately explains the slope-intercept form of a linear equation (y = mx + b), she's already blown it with that first three-word sentence! Speaking of words, Donahue uses 445 words, more or less, to "explain" this process; and she explains it entirely for linear equations. She never mentions higher-order polynomials, never talks about powers or roots, nothing: just takes those 445 words to pretend to explain how to graph an equation entirely by plotting the intercept and drawing a line of the equation. Apparently she's as clueless as the one and only Naima Manal when it comes to using a table of values. She also switches back and forth among multiple equations in her overly wordy explanation, which would surely confuse an innumerate 13-year-old...

Linda could have easily answered the question in two sentences, providing an answer that is not only compact but also applies to every equation, not just linear equations:

1. To find the y intercept(s), solve the equation for the y variable and set x to zero
2. To find the x intercept(s), solve the equation for the x variable and set y to zero

Donahue's references both essentially repeated those instructions -- one even discussed higher-order equations in addition to linear -- but apparently she didn't read even those simple pages. Instead, she wrote out some torturous set of instructions that only apply to linear equations. Around the Antisocial Network, we call that kind of "answer" cause to hand out another Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. The URL was  ehow.com/how_8386050_intercepts-graph-equation.html

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