Find the average slope of two lines

geometry

Consider de image below as reference. Given two lines (Line A and Line B) defined as:

Line A: $y = (-2)x + 10$

Line B: $y = (0.525)x + 0.475$

How to calculate the "Middle Line"? The Middle Line divides the space between Line 1 and Line2 in two equal sub-spaces. By calculating the Middle Line I mean having the values of $a$ and $b$ that define it, like:

Middle Line: $y = ax + b$

By inspection, the Middle Line in the example figure is approximately:

Middle Line: $3x + (-8.81)$

In this example the lines have an intersect, but they could be parallel as well.

Example of the middle line

Best Answer

The slope of the bisector, can be calculated using the slopes of two given lines. The slope is a tangent so we can calculate the slope in question using something like this: $$\text{slope of a bisector}=\tan(\frac{\tan^{−1}slope_1+\tan^{−1}slope_2}{2})$$ Keep in mind that there are two possible bisectors which are perpendicular to each other so the other slope will be negative reciprocal of this slope. You can also see that if lines are parallel, they will have the same slope to find the equation of the bisecting line you can just take arithmetic mean of two given lines. Finally, to find point of intersection if lines are not parallel, just equate the expressions of the given lines and solve the resulting equation for $x$.

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