The population of a certain bacteria in a petri dish is recorded every hour. The results for the first 55 hours are recorded in the table below.

Hours	Bacteria
0	173
1	587
2	2821
3	9861
4	30,256
5	148,760

a) Determine an exponential regression of the form =y=abx using the least-squares method to fit this data, where y is the bacteria population at hour x. Round each value to four decimal places.

b) Using the regression from a), what will the population of the bacteria be at hour 99? Round to the nearest whole number.