The California State Park System Statistical Report for the 2014/2015 Fiscal Year (parks.ca.gov/pages/795/files/14-15%20Statistical%20 Report%20-%20INTERNET.pdf) gave the accompanying data on x 5 Amount of money collected in user fees (in thousands of dollars) and y = Operating cost (in thousands of dollars) for nine state parks in the North Coast Redwoods District.

User Fees (thousands of dollars) ................ Operating Costs (thousands of dollars)
17 ............................................................................................ 100
74 ............................................................................................ 359
811 ....................................................................................... 3,582
380 ....................................................................................... 1,377
33 ............................................................................................ 241
427 .......................................................................................... 760
500 ....................................................................................... 1,044
734 ....................................................................................... 2,205
760 ....................................................................................... 1,620

a. Construct a scatterplot of these data. Describe any interesting features of the scatterplot.

b. Find the equation of the least-squares line.

c. Is the slope of the least-squares line positive or negative? Is this consistent with your description of the scatterplot in Part (a)?

d. Based on the scatterplot in Part (a), do you think that the value of the correlation coefficient for this data set would be less than 0.5 or greater than 0.5? Explain.