The number of cases and deaths from Ebola in some African countries as of October 14, 2014,

Question:

The number of cases and deaths from Ebola in some African countries as of October 14, 2014, are shown in Table 44.

Let y be the number of Ebola deaths in a country that has had x Ebola cases.
a. What is the explanatory variable? Explain.
b. Construct a scatterplot.
c. Find the linear regression equation. Does the graph of the equation come close to the data points?
d. From September 17 to October 17, 2014, there were about 1000 new cases per week. Substitute 1000 for x in the linear regression equation to estimate the number of Ebola deaths from those new cases per week. Why is that substitution for x not in the spirit of how x is defined? In your opinion, does that matter?
e. WHO predicted that if drastic measures were not taken from October 17 to December 17, 2014, there would have been 10,000 new cases per week after that period. Estimate the number of Ebola deaths per week from that many new cases per week. Do you have much faith in this estimate? Explain.