What does "a" represent in the exponential growth/decay formula? Please help ASAP

For a school newspaper article, cienna conducted a survey to find out students’ favorite subjects. she polled all the students in mrs. lopez’s advanced dance class. why is her data likely to be skewed? honors dance students are more likely to enjoy dance than students in the general population, so dance may be overrepresented. cienna should have interviewed all the students in the school to get more accurate data. honors dance students are more likely to enjoy dance than students in the general population, so dance will be underrepresented. cienna should have interviewed only every other student in the class to avoid having too many people.

Quick translate "x is 12 units from 20" into an equation. what are the values of x being described? if you can answer any of my other questions that'd be great too

The area of a rectangle is 15+5y square feet. which of the following expressions could be the length of the sides of the rectangle, in feet a. 5 and 3y b. 5 and 3+y c. 5 and 5+y d. 3 and 5+3y