In the summer of 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig caused a leak in one of British Petroleum (BP) Oil Company's wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude oil rushed unabated for 3 straight months into the Gulf until BP could fix the leak. During the disaster, BP used suction tubes to capture some of the gushing oil. In May of 2011, in an effort to demonstrate the daily improvement in the process, a BP representative presented a graphic on the daily number of 42-gallon barrels (bbl) of oil collected by the suctioning process. A graphic similar to the one used by BP is shown below.

a. Note that the vertical axis represents the "cumulative" number of barrels collected per day. This is calculated by adding the amounts of the previous days' oil collection to the current day's oil collection. Explain why this graph is misleading.
b. Estimates of the actual number of barrels of oil collected per day for each of the 8 days are listed in the accompanying table. Construct a graph for this data that accurately depicts BP's progress in its daily collection of oil. What conclusions can you draw from the graph?
Estimates of Daily Collection of Oil

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14000+ 12000 10000 6 8000 6000 S 4000 2000 May-16 May-17 Ntay-18 My-19 May 20 Nay-21 ay 22 Hay-2 DAY Day Number of Barrels (bbl) May 16 May 17 May 18 May 19 May 20 May 21 May 22 May 23 500 1,000 3.000 2,500 2,500 2.000 1,000 1,500