A scientist studied the relationship between the number of sunflowers, x, per acre and the number of honeybees, y, per acre in a neighborhood. She modeled the relationship with a scatter plot and used the equation
𝑦 =11+15𝑥 for the regression line.
What is the meaning of the slope and the y-intercept of this regression line?
The slope of the regression line is 15, which means that for every additional sunflower per acre, the number of honeybees per acre is expected to increase by 15.
The y-intercept of the regression line is 11, which means that if there are no sunflowers in the neighborhood (x=0), there are still 11 honeybees per acre present. This represents the baseline number of honeybees in the neighborhood independent of the number of sunflowers.