Question

A manager is assessing the correlation between the number of employees in a plant and the number of products produced monthly. The table shows the data:

Number of employees
(x) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Number of products
(y) 120 200 280 360 440 520 600 680 760
Part A: Is there any correlation between the number of employees in the plant and the number of products produced monthly? Justify your answer. (4 points)

Part B: Write a function that best fits the data. (3 points)

Part C: What does the slope and y-intercept of the plot indicate? (3 points)

Answer 1

Part A: Yes, there is a correlation between the number of employees in the plant and the number of products produced monthly. This is because as the number of employees increases, the number of products produced also increases in a linear fashion.

Part B: The function that best fits this data is y = 8x + 120, where x is the number of employees and y is the number of products.

Part C: The slope of this plot indicates that for every additional employee, there is an increase of 8 products produced monthly. The y-intercept of this plot is 120, which is the number of products that would be produced if there were no employees.