CONIC SECTIONS Graphing Ellipses (Page 2 of 3)

The center of the ellipse is (2, -1), the major axis (vertical) is eight units long and the minor axis (horizontal) is six units long. Based on these measurements, adjust the window settings as shown and select ZOOM ZSquare. This will give us a "true" look at the shape of the ellipse.

WINDOW key....

ZOOM key. 5: menu selection.

 Calculator screen image. Calculator screen image.

Notice that there are gaps at the left and right side of the ellipse that shouldn't be there. To correct this problem, we must create a "friendly" window. To do this, we want Xmax-Xmin to be a multiple of 9.4 and Ymax-Ymin to be a multiple of 6.2.
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