Oil prices. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a cartel, so it artificially sets prices.

But are prices related to production? Using the data provided on the disk for crude oil prices ($/barrel) and oil production (thousand barrels per day) between 2001 and 2007, answer the following questions. Use the Crude price as the response variable and Production as the predictor variable.

a) Examine a scatterplot for the two variables and test the conditions for regression.

b) Do you think there is a linear association between oil prices and production? Explain.