Use the guidelines of this section to sketch the curve. In guideline D find an equation of the slant asymptote.

y = –2x² + 5x – 1/2x – 1

Data from section 4.5

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GUIDELINES FOR SKETCHING A CURVE The following checklist is intended as a guide to sketching a curve y = f(x) by hand. Not every item is relevant to every function. (For instance, a given curve might not have an asymptote or possess symmetry.) But the guidelines provide all the information you need to make a sketch that displays the most important aspects of the function. A. Domain It's often useful to start by determining the domain D of f, that is, the set of values of x for which f(x) is defined. B. Intercepts The y-intercept is f(0) and this tells us where the curve intersects the y-axis. To find the x-intercepts, we set y = 0 and solve for x. (You can omit this step if the equation is difficult to solve.) C. Symmetry (1) If f(-x) = f(x) for all x in D, that is, the equation of the curve is unchanged when x is replaced by -x, then f is an even function and the curve is symmetric about the y-axis. This means that our work is cut in half. If we know what the curve looks like for x > 0, then we need only reflect about the y-axis to obtain the complete curve [see Figure 3(a)]. Here are some examples: y = x²y = x¹, y = |x, and y = cos x. (ii) If f(-x) = -f(x) for all x in D, then f is an odd function and the curve is symmetric about the origin. Again we can obtain the complete curve if we know what it looks like for x > 0. [Rotate 180° about the origin; see Figure 3(b).] Some simple examples of odd functions are y = x, y = x³, y = x³, and y = sin.x. (iii) If f(x + p) = f(x) for all x in D, where p is a positive constant, then f is called a periodic function and the smallest such number p is called the period. For instance, y = sin x has period 27 and y = tan x has period . If we know what the graph looks like in an interval of length p, then we can use translation to sketch the entire graph (see Figure 4).