how do I write a math problem for my chart, that only gives the years and the amount of babies born for each year from 2006-2015 when each year is larger or smaller but never equal?

Question

2006-275, 2007-280, 2008 320, 2009-366, 2010-358, 2011-336, 2012-375, 2013-390, 2014-455, and 2015-487, with a prediction for three years.  How do I write this problem and show my prediction for the next three years.  need answer immediately

Answer 1

First, plot the data:

Then we manually fit a straight line through the points (black dots) --- line of best fit --- so that there are about as many points above the line as below it. This is shown as a red dotted line. Using that line we can add three points corresponding to the next three years so that they lie on the line. This gives us predicted data (red dots) for 2016, 2017, 2018. From this we can make a rough prediction by reading off the values from the vertical axis: 2016-500, 2017-523, 2018-545. Only when the figures become available can we see how accurate the prediction is. There are other ways of approaching this problem, for example, by calculating the equation of the line that gives us the minimum sum of perpendicular distances between the given points and the line. This is a tedious process and may only give us predictions that are close to those obtained using the manual method. Another approach is to fit a curve to the points, which is more difficult, and again there is no guarantee of better accuracy in the predictions.