solution

In the manufacture of cloth, the weft packages should not disintegrate unduly

during weaving. A direct measure of the tendency to disintegrate exists, but

it is laborious and uneconomical to carry out. In addition, there are indirect

measures based on laboratory tests. Managers of the Brockway Textile Company

want to determine the extent to which one of these indirect measures is

correlated with the direct measure. If the correlation is high enough, Brockway

managers believe that they may be able to use the indirect measure instead of

the direct measure. An experiment was carried out in which both the direct and indirect measures

of the tendency to disintegrate were calculated for 18 lots of packages.

The results follow

What linear regression line would you use to predict the value of the

direct measure on the basis of knowledge of the indirect measure?

. On the basis of your findings, write a brief report indicating the factors

to be weighed in deciding whether to substitute the indirect measure for

the direct measure.