Fuel efficiency, measured in miles per gallon, is a feature often considered by shoppers looking for a new car. The scatterplot shows the vehicle weight of 15 car models in pounds, plotted against their highway fuel efficiency.

Which of the labeled points on the graph would be considered a high leverage point?

point A
point B
point C
point D

ANSWER

POINT D

In a scatterplot, a high leverage point is a point that is far from the mean of the data in the predictor variable (in this case, vehicle weight). These points can have a disproportionate influence on the slope of the least-squares regression line because they are more distant from the other points in the scatterplot.

In this case, point D is a high leverage point because it has a much lower vehicle weight than the other points on the graph. This makes it a more influential point in determining the slope of the least-squares regression line.