Lovely Lawns, Inc., intends to use sales of lawn fertilizer to predict lawn mower sales. The store manager estimates a probable six-week lag between fertilizer sales and mower sales. The pertinent data are:

Chapter Three Forecasting 133 Period Fertilizer Sales (tons)

Number of Mowers Sold (six-week lag)

1 1.6 10 2 1.3 8 3 1.8 11 4 2.0 12 5 2.2 12 6 1.6 9 7 1.5 8 8 1.3 7 9 1.7 10 10 1.2 6 11 1.9 11 12 1.4 8 13 1.7 10 14 1.6 9

a. Determine the correlation between the two variables. Does it appear that a relationship between these variables will yield reasonable predictions? Explain.

b. Obtain a linear regression line for the data.

c. Predict expected lawn mower sales for the first week in August, given fertilizer sales six weeks earlier of 2 tons.

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