The Following Figure, from Investor's Business Daily (March 5, 1998)

question 1

Multiple Choice

The following figure, from Investor's Business Daily (March 5, 1998) , shows how quickly the U.S. metal processing industry isconsolidating. The linear equation that is the best fit for the number of metal processors as a function of years after 1990 is , and the best exponential fit is . The linear equation seems to give a much better fit for the data points than the exponential equation. Why then is the exponential equation a more useful model to predict the number of metal processors in ? ​

• A)The quantity of metal processing units as a function of time is exponential for the first five years, and linear for the next five years.
• B)As the quantity of metal processors decreases, they decrease at an increasingly logarithmic rate as a function of time.
• C)The number of metal processing units will probably start to increase in 2007.
• D)The linear model gives a negative number of processors in 2010. The exponential model is always non-negative.
• E)The number of metal processing units follows a parabolic model.

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