Martians are carefully studying the stinx, which had been placed on the Martians endangered species
list in 1957. The table below gives the stinx population for select years:
Year 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Stinx Population 1750 1649 1553 1497 1659 1798 1951
(a) Calculate the slope of the line between each consecutive pair of points. Show all your work.
(b) What can you say about the overall behavior of the stinx population based on the slopes
calculated in part (a)?
(c) Does it make sense to use a linear model for this data? Remember to explain your reasoning.
