BP oil leak. In the summer of 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig caused a leak in one of British Petroleum (BP) Oil Company’s wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude oil rushed unabated for 3 straight months into the Gulf until BP could fix the leak. During the disaster, BP used suction tubes to capture some of the gushing oil. In May of 2011, in an effort to demonstrate the daily improvement in the process, a BP representative presented a graphic on the daily number of 42-gallon barrels (bbl) of oil collected by the suctioning process. A graphic similar to the one used by BP is shown below.

a. Note that the vertical axis represents the “cumulative” number of barrels collected per day. This is calculated by adding the amounts of the previous days’ oil collection BPOIL M02_MCCL3396_14_GE_C02.indd 132 29/09/2021 13:39 133 to the current day’s oil collection. Explain why this graph is misleading.

b. Estimates of the actual number of barrels of oil collected per day for each of the 8 days are listed in the accompanying table. Construct a graph for these data that accurately depicts BP’s progress in its daily collection of oil. What conclusions can you draw from the graph? Estimates of Daily Collection of Oil Day Number of Barrels (bbl) May 16 500 May 17 1,000 May 18 3,000 May 19 2,500 May 20 2,500 May 21 2,000 May 22 1,000 May 23 1,500