# 7 – Rational Expressions and Functions

• Transcript: Rational Expressions and Functions
• Pineapples make great snacks, but have you ever seen a pineapple plant?
• They start out as little blossoms in a tropical field, before traveling across the world to your supermarket.
• When you cut a pineapple in half, it’s pretty obvious how many pieces you have.
• But if you’re having friends over for a cookout later, the pieces can get smaller and harder to keep track of.
• Basically, you’ve got a division problem.
• Have you ever seen an animal that seemed to be made of different animals?
• You might say that you are about to meet the platypus of Algebra: Rational Functions.
• And once you get over the unusual arrangement of the pieces, you’ll start to recognize more than a few familiar features.
• You’ll see that Rational Functions can sometimes resemble inverse relationships.
• Rational functions can be graphed, and their graphs may have vertical asmptotes.
• Just don’t try to make your graph cross the asymptote!
• And it all begins with your oldest mathematical tools: arithmetic.
• In this unit you’ll see that you can add, subtract, multiply and divide not just counting numbers, but variables and variable expressions as well.