The number of newly reported crime cases in a county in New York State is shown in the accompanying table, where x represents the number of years since 2008, and y represents number of new cases. Write the linear regression equation that represents this set of data, rounding all coefficients to the nearest hundredth. Using this equation, find the projected number of new cases for 2016, rounded to the nearest whole number.
If you don't know how to use your calculator to find a regression equation, that is much too much to try and teach you in a forum such as this (it takes all hour to teach Algebra 2 students during the school year and they are sitting in class watching a demonstration!). I entered the data in my calculator and got the equation to be
y = 18.9x + 850 with a correlation coefficient of only .8 so this is not a very good model for this data anyway. However, we will proceed with the question as it asks. Year 0 is 2008, so the year in question, 2016, is year 8. We fill in the model with 8 for x and solve for y, the cases in NY of crime in that year:
