Banking—Branch Offices: In order to increase consumer access to personal banking, many ban...

Banking—Branch Offices: In order to increase consumer access to personal banking, many banking institutions have added branch offices in grocery stores, supermarkets, and department stores. The number of branch offices in the United States from 2000 to 2011 can be modeled by the linear function

 f(x) = 3.31x + 60.3 0 ≤ x ≤ 11

where x represents the number of years since 2000 and f(x) represents the number of branch offices in thousands. (Source: U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.)

(a) By inspecting the model, fill in the blanks to complete the following sentence:

From 2000 to 2011, the number of branch offices _____ by an average of _____ thousand branches per year.

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(b) Evaluate f(9) and interpret.

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(c) According to the model, during what year were there 73.54 thousand branch offices?