Changing a

Consider the function defined by

The following graph shows the behavior of the function for a > 8:

For 0 < a < 1, the 'inverted c' is inside the [-1, 1] x [-1, 1] square. Negative values of a produce the same shape for the graph (the difference is the order in which the points are drawn):

Observe that for values that are near to 0, the function will be a horizontal line. The interesting thing is that no matter what value of a is chosen, the inverted C always 'end' in the same point in the left. What is the value of x? I got this, by using a zoom:

And for different values of a, I obtained the same value, x =-0.8. Observe that for ,. This explains the values -0.8 we had above.

So a affects only the height of our graph. That can be expected, since a is on the definition of y.


Back