International Economics—Unemployment in Ireland: Unemployment has been acute in Ireland in...

International Economics—Unemployment in Ireland: Unemployment has been acute in Ireland in the past few years. “Unemployment compensation is not a good measure for unemployment. A lot of people who lost their jobs in the last three years are not entitled to be on it,” said senior policy analyst John Sweeney. (Source: The Belfast Times.) The number unemployed in Ireland annually from 2000 to 2010 can be modeled by

where x represents the number of years since 2000, and f(x) represents the number of unemployed in Ireland, measured in thousands. (Source: Google public data.)

(a) Determine the equation for the vertical asymptote of f. Is the vertical asymptote in the reasonable domain of f ?

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(b) Determine and interpret.