Brewsky's is a chain of micro-breweries. Managers are interested in the costs of the stores and believe that the costs can be explained in large part by the number of customers patronizing the stores. Monthly data regarding customer visits and costs for the preceding year for one of the stores have been entered into the regression analysis and the analysis is as follows:

Average monthly customer visits		1,462
Average monthly total costs	$	4,629
Regression Results
Intercept	$	1,496
b coefficient	$	2.08
R2		0.86814

In a regression equation expressed as y = a + bx, how is the letter y best described? (CMA adapted)

• An estimate of the total customers for the month.

• The proximity of the data points to the regression line.

• The observed store cost for a given month.

• The estimate of the number of new customer visits for the month.