A hunting incident is defined as an occurrence when a person is injured as the result of a discharge of a firearm or bow and arrow while hunting or trapping. After a 12-year-old girl accidentally shot herself and died during deer season in 2004, a newspaper reported that "Experts say sport safer now than it's ever been," and listed numbers of hunting incidents in the state for the years 1994 to 2003.

a. For that particular state and the time period specified, do the data represent a sample or the entire population?

b. Use software to produce a scatterplot of the data.

c. Use software to perform a regression of incidents on year, and state the regression equation.

d. Report the correlation.

e. Characterize the relationship as being strong and negative, weak and negative, weak and positive, or strong and positive.

f. Each year, the number of incidents goes down by about how many?

g. Use the regression equation to predict the number of incidents for 2004.

h. Your prediction from part (g) is probably not entirely correct. What is the approximate size of your prediction error?

i. To decide if hunting really has gotten safer, what additional information would be most helpful: time of day that the incidents occurred, the number of active hunters for each year, or whether the hunters each year included children?