Question: Carpet City wants to develop a means to forecast its carpet sales. The store manager believes that the store’s sales are directly related to the number of new housing starts in town. The manager has gathered data from county records on monthly house construction permits and from store records on monthly sales. These data are as follows:

Monthly Carpet Monthly Construction

Sales (1,000 yd) Permits

12 41

11 15

9 18

14 26

a. Develop a linear regression model for these data and forecast carpet sales if 30 construction permits for new homes are filed.

b. Determine the strength of the casual relationship between monthly sales and hew home construction by using correlation.