As of the time of writing this book, Covid-19 is one of the most serious infectious diseases currently in existence, and has caused a global pandemic, killed hundreds of thousands of people (most likely millions) and caused enormous harm to the world’s health and economy. Data from Australia are shown in Fig. 24.8. Selected data points (the red dots in Fig. 24.8) are shown in Table 24.1.

a. Use these selected data points and the trapezoid method to estimate the total number of Covid-19 infections in Australia for the first 103 days after 14 March, 2020.

b. Do you think your estimate will be an underestimate or an overestimate?

c. Go to the Our World in Data webpage, download the original data, and calculate the actual number of Covid-19 infections over that time period.