Mth163
One of the questions for homework says: Sketch the graph that would be formed if your graph is y=x^2 was stretched vertically by a factor of 2, etc... are you just making the graph y=x^2 wider and skinnier?
If a graph is stretched vertically by factor 2, that means every point of the graph moves twice as far from the horizontal axis.
The points (-1, 1), (0, 0) and (1, 1) are the basic points of the y = x^2 graph.
If this graph is vertically stretched by factor 2, then the points become (-1, 2), (0, 0) and ( 1, 2).
This has the effect of making the graph appear skinnier (but not wider, which would be contradict 'skinnier').