Nielsen Ratings are often published in national newspapers. The number of viewers (in millions)

for each program is given with the corresponding Nielsen Rating. With the number of viewers as x and the ratings as y, the data published in USA Today (February 7, 2002) for the 7–10 PM time slot resulted in a correlation coefficient of 0.99 and the regression equation ˆ y  0.12  0.6x.

Explain how the slope and y intercept demonstrate that the number of viewers, x, must have the largest impact on predicting the Nielsen Rating.