Social sciences: Crime Rates For several decades, crime in the United States has been...

Social sciences: Crime Rates For several decades, crime in the United States has been declining. The numbers of property crimes per 100,000 people for recent decades are shown in the following table.

a. Number the data columns with x-values 1–3 (so that x stands for the number of decades since 1980) and use exponential regression to fit a curve to the data. State the regression formula. [Hint: See Example 12 on pages 59–60.]

b. Use the regression function to predict the crime rate in the year 2020.