Davis Stores sells clothing in 15 stores located around the southwestern United States. The managers at Davis are considering expanding by opening new stores and are interested in estimating costs in potential new locations. They believe that costs are driven in large part by store volume measured by revenue. During a discussion, one of the managers suggests that number of employees might be better at explaining cost than store revenues. As a result of that suggestion, managers collected the following information from last years operations (revenues and costs in thousands of dollars):

Store	Costs	Employees	Revenues
101	$5,031	37	$3,118
102	5,935	57	3,306
103	4,172	53	4,583
104	3,146	27	4,232
105	3,155	30	6,560
106	2,219	30	2,147
107	3,514	33	5,041
108	5,758	51	2,372
109	2,468	33	5,672
110	2,597	27	2,583
111	5,151	45	3,296
112	3,867	41	3,274
113	4,905	33	4,283
114	2,008	24	4,449
115	2,769	31	3,737

a. Use the high-low method to estimate the fixed and variable portions of store costs based on employees. (Do not round your intermediate calculations. Negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. Round your answers to 2 decimal places. Enter your answers in thousands of dollars.)

b. Use the results of your high-low analysis to estimate the cost for a store with 55 employees.