Ken Howard, financial analyst at KMW Corporation, is examining the behavior of quarterly

maintenance costs for budgeting purposes. Howard collects the following data on machine

hours worked and maintenance costs for the past $12$ quarters:

Required:

Estimate the cost function for the quarterly data using the high$-$low method.

Apply Excel to estimated cost function based on the regression method. Plot the results

and explain the main contents of the regression table.

Howard anticipates that $KMW$ will operate machines for $30,000$ hours in quarter $13.$

Calculate the predicted maintenance costs in quarter $13$ using the cost function estimated

in requirement $1$ and requirement $2.$ Comment on the accuracy of both methods and

which one you will select for future estimation?