Section 2.5 Equations of Lines and Linear Models
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Modeling Data CLASSROOM EXAMPLE 7 Finding an Equation of a Line That Models Data Average annual tuition and fees for in-state students at public four-year colleges are shown in the table for selected years and graphed as ordered pairs of points in the figure, where x = 0 represents 2009, x = 1 represents 2010, and so on, and y represents the cost in dollars. This graph of ordered pairs of data is called a scatter diagram.
(a) Find an equation that models the data using the data points (1, 6695) and (3, 7703).
(b) Use the equation from part (a) to predict the cost of tuition and fees at public four-year colleges in 2015.
Guidelines for Modeling Step 1 Make a Step 2 Find an them.
of the data.
that models the data. For a line, this involves selecting data points and finding the of the through