The La Costa Corporation operates five manufacturing plants in South America. The company tracks the medical costs that are directly attributed to accidents that occur at the plants each year. The following data show the medical costs (in U.S. dollars) at each plant for the most recent year along with the number of employees who work at each plant:

a. Compute the weighted average for the annual medical costs at the five plants using the numbers of employees as the weights.
b. Explain why La Costa would want to use a weighted average in this situation rather than a simple average of the five medical cost values.

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Medical Cost $7,400 $14,400 $12,300 $6,200 $3,100 402 256 Employees 123 67 109