It took me up until reading your comment to get this one. “Is it that the scaling transformation only scaled the y-axis?? Oh…”
I teach these basic transformations as part of my middle school math classes, and I was completely loss as to why they didn’t include a reflection, but then I realized a reflection wouldn’t be that interesting because it could be indistinguishable from a translation.
I was at a loss too as to where they source the “most common” when skewing is also extremely common
Scaling, in general, is the least common middle school transformation covered by state curriculum as far as depth of knowledge is concerned, at least where I’ve taught. Students just aren’t ready at that age to calculate something as sophisticated as the scale factor contributing to an object’s loss of size.
