The Lesson
The y-coordinate is the second number in the pair of numbers used to describe Cartesian coordinates. For example, in the Cartesian coordinates (2, 4), the y-coordinate is 4 (the number on the right):What Does the Y-Coordinate Mean?
The y-coordinate tells you how far up (or down) the vertical y-axis a point is on a graph (measured from the origin). If a point has Cartesian coordinates (2, 4), the point would be 4 units up the y-axis. The image below shows what we mean by a point being 4 units along the x-axis (measured from the origin):Note: The y-axis is labelled with numbers (0, 1, 2, 3...) so you can measure how far up the point is.