Question

what is a function

Answer 1

A function put simply is what gives you an output for a given input. The differences when compared to a relation is that a function can have only 1 output for each input and also that each input should have an output.

Answer 2

Excellent question!

A function is a way to do things in math. This maybe the simplest definition of a function.

You may have seen y = f(x) a lot of times. But what does that actually mean?

It simply means f(x) is some 'thing' that takes in any value of 'x' from the x axis of a graph and manipulates it to give a f(x) value which is pictured on the y axis. Hence, y = f(x).

Here is this picture that illustrates it:


So, f(x) = x + 2 is a function!

What this function does is, it takes any x value from the graph and it adds 2 to the function and gives out the value as f(x).

f(x) = x^2 + 1000

Even this is a function! It takes in an x value, squares it, add 1000 and gives the output as f(x).

Getting this? :)