The population of a certain bacteria in a petri dish is recorded every hour. The results
for the first 5 hours are recorded in the table below.
Hours
Bacteria
0
115
1
518
2
2333
3
13,122
4
46,255
5
230,291
=
ab using the least-squares
a) Determine an exponential regression of the form y
method to fit this data, where y is the bacteria population at hour x. Round each value
to four decimal places.
b) Using the regression from a), what will the population of the bacteria be at hour 8?
Round to the nearest whole number.