Steel Has Been Playing a Decreasing Role in the Manufacture

Multiple Choice

Steel has been playing a decreasing role in the manufacture of beverage cans in the United States. According to the Can Manufacture Institute, the use of bimetallic cans has been dwindling while the use of all-aluminum cans has been growing steadily. The accompanying table gives the production (in billions) of all-aluminum cans over the period from 1975 through 1989: Find an equation of the least-squares line for these data. (Let x = 1 represent the year 1975.) Please round the coefficients in your equation to three decimal places. Use the result to estimate the number of cans produced in 1994, assuming the trend continued.

A) y = 4.834x + 11.857; 108.537 billion cans
B) y = 4.842x + 11.842; 108.659 billion cans
C) y = 4.834x + 11.857; 108.500 billion cans
D) y = 4.842x + 11.842; 108.682 billion cans