Born to be old Is there a relationship between the

QUESTION:

Born to be old? Is there a relationship between the gestational period (time from conception to birth) of an animal and its average life span? The figure shows a scatterplot of the gestational period and average life span for 43 species of animals.24 0 10 20 30 40 Life span (years) Gestation (days) A C B 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 (a) Describe the direction, form, and strength of the scatterplot. (b) Three unusual points are labeled on the graph: Point A is for the hippopotamus, Point B is for the giraffe, and Point C is for the Asian elephant. In what way is each of these animals unusual? s Explain what the slope b and the y intercept a mean in the equation y a bx = + of a regression line. s Use the regression line to predict y for a given x. Beware of extrapolation.