We have to probably do a quick review of intercepts before going much beyond.  Intercepts are the points on which the graph will cross the x or y-axis.

Determining intercepts is a fairly simple procedure. To determine the y-intercept of a function y = f ( x ) all we have to do is set x = 0 and evaluate to determine the y coordinate.  In other terms, the y-intercept is the point (0, f (0)) .  We determine x-intercepts in pretty much the similar way.  We set y = 0 and solve the resulting equation for the x coordinates.  Thus, we will have to solve the equation,

                                                        f ( x ) = 0