lesson
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Imagine you have a giant treasure map with two roads crossing right in the middle.
To find any hidden treasure, you just count your steps along each road starting from the center.
The Two Axes and the Origin
The flat side-to-side line is the x-axis, and the straight up-and-down line is the y-axis.
The exact center point where both lines cross is called the origin, written as (0,0).
📊Interactive diagram
What happens when two crossing lines slice a flat space into four giant corners?
The Four Quadrants
The crossing axes divide the grid into four separate regions called quadrants.
We label them with Roman numerals I, II, III, and IV by starting in the top-right corner and moving counter-clockwise, like tracing a giant letter C.
📊Interactive diagram
How can you tell which quadrant a point lives in just by checking positive and negative signs?