The Mercer Human Resource Consulting website (www.mercer com lists prices of certain items in selected cities around the world. It also reports an overall cost of living index for each city compared with the costs of hundreds of items in New York City For example London at 112.6 is 12.6% more expensive than New York. You will find the 2006 data for 16 cities below. Included are the 2006 cost of living index, the cost of a luxury apartment (per month), the price of a bus or subway ride the price of a DVD. the price of an international newspaper the price of a cup of coffee (including service, and the price of a fast-food hamburger meal. All prices are in US dollars.

a) Using Minitab, examine the relationship between the overall cost of living and the cost of each of these individual items by providing

(i) A correlation matrix plot (which provides a scatterplot correlation and p-value) for all of these individual items

(ii) A residuals versus fits' regular plot for these three items only (Rent, Coffee, News) and

(iii) A regression analysis report (Regression Equation coefficients. Model Summary. Analysis of Variance Unusual Observations for these three items only Rent, Coffee, News)

b) Based on the correlations and the p-value of the linear regression which item would be the best predictor of the overall cost in these cities? Which would be the worst?

c) Are there any surprising relationships?

d) Write a short report detailing your conclusions

City	Cost of Living	Rent	Pubic Transport	DVD	News	Coffee	Fast Food
London	112.6	1750	2.25	12.49	1.7	2.7	5.5
Dublin	93.8	874	1.28	14.56	1.97	2.86	5.05
Paris	95.1	1353	1.21	12.15	1.97	2.31	5.12
Rome	91.8	976	0.94	15.08	1.97	2.31	4.91
Amsterdam	85.4	976	1.35	15.58	2.38	2.51	5.46
Berlin	81.2	770	1.69	12.84	2.04	2.51	4.26
Athens	83.1	771	0.8	13.53	1.83	3.68	5.97
Brussels	81.5	702	1.28	14.2	1.97	2.31	4.77
Madrid	83.6	942	1	14.22	2.31	2.38	5.18
Prague	84.1	804	0.66	14.94	1.8	2.97	3.89
Warsaw	82.4	804	0.68	14.02	2.4	2.78	3.79
Tokyo	121.1	2402	1.57	12.75	1.34	2.27	3.99
Sydney	93.3	1154	1.31	11.53	2.23	2.29	3.74
New York	102	2048	1.39	11.27	1.53	3.06	4.43
Buenos Aires	56.8	621	0.4	7.38	3.2	1.64	2.58
Vancouver	83.2	854	1.38	11.11	2.48	2.43	3.79