Wildfire damage.

We saw that the number of wildfires in the United States has been declining. But has the damage done by wildfires also been declining? Here's a scatterplot of the amount of land lost to wildfires (in millions of acres) during the same period, along with a least squares line:

a) Do you think a linear model is appropriate for these data? Explain.

b) Interpret the slope in this context.

c) Can we interpret the intercept? Why or why not?

d) What does the value of say about the size of the residuals? What does it say about the effectiveness of the model?

e) What does mean in this context?