Over the past two decades the Internet has grown very

Chapter 1, Problem 23

(choose chapter or problem)

Over the past two decades the Internet has grown very rapidly. Figures A and B provide estimates for the number n of Internet host computers, worldwide, for the years t 19951997 and 19851987. Source: Network Wizards (http//www.nw.com) Figure A Figure B (a) Use Figure A to complete the following table. Round the values of n to the nearest two million. Then use the midpoint formula and the numbers in your table to estimate the global number of Internet host computers for the year 1996. t 1995 1997 n (b) Use Figure B to complete the following table. Round the values of n to the nearest two thousand. Then use the midpoint formula and the numbers in your table to estimate the global number of Internet host computers for the year 1986. t 1985 1987 n (c) Compute the percentage errors to determine which estimate, the one for 1986 or the one for 1996, is more accurate. Use the following data from Network Wizards (http//www.nw.com) in computing the percentage errors: The number of host computers for 1986 and 1996 were 5089 and 21,819,000, respectively. (Round each answer to the nearest one percent.) Note: Youll find out in part (c) that one estimate is very good, the other is way off. The point here is that without more initial information, its hard to say whether the midpoint formula will produce a useful estimate. In subsequent chapters, well use functions and larger data sets to obtain more reliable estimates.