A researcher took a sample of 10 years and found the following relationship between x and y, where x is the number of major natural calamities (such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, etc.) that occurred during a year and y represents the average annual total profits (in millions of dollars) of a sample of insurance companies in the United States.
ŷ = 342.6 + 2.10x
a. A randomly selected year had 24 major calamities. What are the expected average profits of U.S. insurance companies for that year?
b. Suppose the number of major calamities was the same for each of 3 years. Do you expect the average profits for all U.S. insurance companies to be the same for each of these 3 years? Explain.
c. Is the relationship between x and y exact or nonexact?