A financial analyst is examining the relationship between stock prices and earnings per share. She chooses fifteen publicly traded companies at random and records for each the company's current stock price and the company's earnings per share reported for the past12

months. Her data are given below, withx

denoting the earnings per share from the previous year andy

denoting the current stock price (both in dollars). A scatter plot of her data is shown in Figure 1. Also given is the product of the earnings per share and the current stock price for each of the fifteen stocks. (These products, written in the column labelled "xy

", may aid in calculations.)Earnings per share,x

(in dollars)Current stock price,y

(in dollars)xy

27.071.1029.77717.020.7212.254438.511.0741.205741.601.0242.43242.971.6470.470840.971.3053.26132.281.7757.135650.691.6583.638558.812.11124.089130.341.3440.655636.671.5958.305315.480.528.049631.030.8526.375557.792.69155.455121.550.6113.1455Send data to calculator

Current stock price

(in dollars)

y

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

x

10

20

30

40

50

60

0

Earnings per share

(in dollars)Figure1

What is the slope of the least-squares regression line for these data? Carry your intermediate computations to at least four decimal places and round your answer to at least three decimal places. (If necessary, consult alist of formulas.)