Two questions to ask:
1. Does V(x) grow or decay?
2. When putting 4(0.65)^x vs 4(1.35)^x into the Y= of the TI-83/4, does the table look like the one above?
Hopefully the student will know that the number in parentheses (the growth/decay factor) determines if it is growth or decay but through the graphing calculator, they can figure it out, get the right answer and earn 2 points!

Can use the TI-83/4 to figure this one out!
The zeros are the values of x that make f(x) or y equal to zero.
Answer (1) looks like this:  only 1 zero at x = -3 which can be seen on both the graph and the table

Answer (2) looks like this with 3 zeros but only one of them is an integer value (both the table and the graph show that (-4,0) is a point

Let’s try answer (3):

Here we can see that on the table when x = -3 y = 0 and also when x = 0 and x = 4, y is also equal to zero.  Looking at the graph we can see that the 3 x-intercepts are integer values of -3, 0 and 4.  That’s it!

Pay close attention to the signs!! We need to look for the factors with the opposite sign to ‘zero it out’!  This can be a bit counterintuitive as when -3 is a solution then the factor is (x + 3), as -3 makes x + 3 = 0.  When 4 is a solution, the factor must be (x – 4)  rather than  (x+4) as plugging in 4 would not result in zero.

Using the TI-84 makes this an easy question — we can see that the two functions — a linear and an absolute value intersect once at (2,4)…then we have to read clearly to see if the question is asking for x or y.  Get the Math and get 2 more points!!

Look at the difference between the Given and Step 1…
A great visual to compare the above to is:

https://profteacher.com/2009/12/11/distributive-property/
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra-basics/alg-basics-algebraic-expressions/alg-basics-distributive-property/e/distributive-property-with-variables
That’s it — two points!

Definition of a function:
Every x maps to a unique y
Notice Jan has 31 days and that’s it
March has 31 days and April has 30 days
But the number of days in February depends on leap year vs non leap year
So which month maps to two outputs?
(https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/months/