The Times

Local Heros Family Aims To Use 300 kWh A Month

By Jurn A. List There have been many stories of adolescents trying to save energy, but not many are similar to the story of Haziq Khairi, aged only 14. Over the past 8 months he has been valiantly trying to save his familys energy usage. When asked why, he humbly responded, I only want to do whats right for the Earth. Hopefully I can get more people to take notice of their electricity usage, and take action. From August to March, his electricity usage has decreased by 3 kWh. Three might not seem such a large number. But if a million families save 3 kWh, wed be saving 3,000,000 kWh. Thats quite a lot, says the effervescent Haziq. It was rather difficult at times to get all my family members on board for this project. Occasionally, we would let our usage go out of control, like in October and April, when it went over 700. That is not going to stop our hero from reaching his goals. My goal is for my family to reduce our energy consumption to 300 kWh. It may seem tough, but youve just got to believe in yourself. I think thats something everyone needs to do. Just believe. These inspirational words inspired us to go a little more in depth and predict how long it would take Haziqs family to reach 300 kWh, based on his current data.

The Math
As explained by Haziq Khairi

To find the equation for my line of best fit, I took the standard form of a linear equation, y = mx +b , where m = the slope and b = the y intercept. To find my slope, I take two coordinates (0, 800) and (4, 687). I subtract the x and y coordinates by each other: 800 687 = 113 0 4 = -4 My slope is negative, which shows that my usage decreased and the line is an example of linear decay. Negative 113 over 4 is the same as -28.25. To find b all I do is find where my line of best fit touches the y intercept, which is (0, 800). When you put that in the equation y = mx = b, I get:
y = -28.25x + 800 That is the equation for my line of best fit. To make the prediction, I take the 300, the kWh amount Im aiming for, and substitute it for y: 300 = -28.25x +800 I will use inverse operations and subtract 800 from both sides. That will leave me with -500 = -28.25x. To isolate the variable x, I divide both sides by -28.25. This leaves me with x = 17.7 months, rounded to 18. This means it will take me about 18 months to reach 300 kWh.