A small computer chip manufacturer wants to forecast monthly ozperating costs as a function of the number of units produced during a month. The company has collected the 16 months of data in the file P14_34.xlsx.

a. Determine an equation that can be used to predict monthly production costs from units produced. Are there any outliers?

b. How could the regression line obtained in part a be used to determine whether the company was efficient or inefficient during any particular month?