Environmental Biologists Studying the Relationship Between the Number of Owls

Multiple Choice

Environmental biologists studying the relationship between the number of owls in a forested region and the number of field mice in the region believe that the deterministic component of the relationship is a straight line. A scatterplot shows that even though the general trend is linear, the points do not fall exactly on a straight line. Which of the following factors might account for the random component of this regression model?

A) Variation in the size of the mice might cause variation in the amount of mice consumed by owls.
B) Different size owls might affect the number of mice eaten.
C) Variability might appear in the instrument used to count mice.
D) All of these are possible factors that could account for the random component of the regression model.