A statistical program is recommended.

Suppose the following table shows a company's annual revenue (in billions of dollars) for 2012 (period 1) to 2017 (period 6).

Year	Period	Sale ($ Billions)
2012	1	1.54
2013	2	1.87
2014	3	2.36
2015	4	3.13
2016	5	3.54
2017	6	4.14

(a)

Construct a time-series plot.

A time series has a horizontal axis labeled "Period" with values from 0 to 7 and a vertical axis labeled "Budget ($ billions)" with values from 0 to 4. The time series plot contains a series of 6 points connected by line segments. The segments and the approximate points they connect are as follows.

• The segments start at (1, 1.54),
• go down and right through 2 points to (3, 1.36),
• and go up and right through 3 points to stop at (6, 4.14).

A time series has a horizontal axis labeled "Period" with values from 0 to 7 and a vertical axis labeled "Budget ($ billions)" with values from 0 to 4. The time series plot contains a series of 6 points connected by line segments. The segments and the approximate points they connect are as follows.

• The segments start at (1, 4.14),
• go down and right through 3 points to (4, 1.36),
• and go up and right through 2 points to stop at (6, 1.54).

A time series has a horizontal axis labeled "Period" with values from 0 to 7 and a vertical axis labeled "Budget ($ billions)" with values from 0 to 4. The time series plot contains a series of 6 points connected by line segments. The segments and the approximate points they connect are as follows.

• The segments start at (1, 4.14),
• and go down and right through 5 points to stop at (6, 1.54).

A time series has a horizontal axis labeled "Period" with values from 0 to 7 and a vertical axis labeled "Budget ($ billions)" with values from 0 to 4. The time series plot contains a series of 6 points connected by line segments. The segments and the approximate points they connect are as follows.

• The segments start at (1, 1.54),
• and go up and right through 5 points to stop at (6, 4.14).

What type of pattern exists in the data?

The time series plot shows an upward curvilinear trend.The time series plot shows a downward curvilinear trend. The time series plot shows an upward linear trend.The time series plot shows a downward linear trend.

(b) Develop a linear trend equation for this time series. (Round your numerical values to three decimal places.)

T_t =

(c) What is the forecast for sales (in billions of dollars) for period 7? (Round your answer to two decimal places.)

$ billions