Apperson and Fitz is a chain of clothing stores that caters to high school and college students.

It publishes a quarterly catalog and operates a Web site that features provocatively attired males and females. The Web site is very expensive to maintain, and company executives are not sure whether the number of hits at the site relate to sales (i.e., people may be looking at the site’s pictures only). The Web master has accumulated the following data for hits per month and orders placed at the Web site for the past 20 months:

Month Hits (1,000s) Orders (1,000s)

1 34.2 7.6 2 28.5 6.3 3 36.7 8.9 4 42.3 5.7 5 25.8 5.9 6 52.3 6.3 7 35.2 7.2 8 27.9 4.1 9 31.4 3.7 10 29.4 5.9 11 46.7 10.8 12 43.5 8.7 13 52.6 9.3 14 61.8 6.5 15 37.3 4.8 16 28.9 3.1 17 26.4 6.2 18 39.4 5.9 19 44.7 7.2 20 46.3 5.5 Develop a linear regression model for these data and indicate whether there appears to be a strong relationship between Web site hits and orders. What would be the forecast for orders with 50,000 hits per month?

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