Muons are subatomic particles that are formed when cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere. These particles then decay as they interact with the atmosphere so that only a small fraction of muons reach the surface of the earth. At sea level about 1 muon passes through each square centimeter area every minute, but what about higher up? A muon detector was set up at various elevations and produced the following data, where x is the elevation (in thousands of feet) of the muon detector, and y is the number of detected muons per hour.

x 5.25 5.75 6.25 6.75 7.25 y 541 542 569 573 592 Complete parts

(a) through (e), given Sx 5 31.25, Sy 5 2817, Sx2 5197.813, Sy2 51,588,999, Sxy 517,672.75, and r < 0.965.

(f) If the detector is moved to a location at 6.5 (thousand feet), what does the least-squares line forecast for y 5the number of muons detected per hour?

AppendixLO1