The United States Census Bureau collects and maintains data on a wide range of statistics associated with the U.S. economy. For example, the file Retail Sales contains the total retail sales in January for the years 2001 through 2016 (source: www.census.gov/

retail).

a. Produce a time-series plot of these data. Indicate the time-series components in the data.

b. Conduct a test of hypothesis to determine if there is a linear trend in these data. Use a significance level of 0.10 and the p-value approach.

c. Provide forecasts for e-commerce retail sales for January 2017.