See Examples 2, 3, 10, and 11 as you do Exercise.Finance The price of Starbucks stock in 2...

See Examples 2, 3, 10, and 11 as you do Exercise.

Finance The price of Starbucks stock in 2008 can be modeled by the function

where x represents the number of business days past June 16, 2008.*

(a) Graph f(x).

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(b) What is the lowest stock price during the period defined by f(x)?

Example 2

Graph the following function:

Solution:

Consider the two parts of the rule of f. The graphs of y = x +1 and y = −2x + 7 are straight lines. The graph of f consists of

Each of these line segments can be graphed by plotting two points in the appropriate interval, as shown in Figure 1.

Note that the left and right parts of the graph each extend to the vertical line through x = 2, where the two halves of the graph meet at the point (2, 3).

FIGURE 1

*Morningstar.com.