At the Spring Valley Company, the cost of the personnel department has always been charged to production departments based upon number of employees. Recently, opinions gathered from the department managers indicate that the number of new hires might be a better predictor of personnel costs.

Total personnel department costs are $283,000.

Department	A	B	C
Number of employees	70	285	225
Number of new hires	30	15	14

Which cost estimation method is being used by Spring Valley Company?

A. the account analysis method

B. the simple regression method

C. the marginal costing method

D. the conference method