Here are two sets of data representing the annual revenue of two different small businesses for the past ten years. One of them had growth that was approximately linear, and one of them had growth that was approximately exponential. The revenue is expressed in thousands of dollars.
Business A:
| year |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
| revenue |
61.2 |
68.4 |
74.9 |
83.1 |
88.5 |
96.4 |
104.1 |
109.9 |
117.0 |
125.2 |
Business B:
| year |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
| revenue |
40 |
47.9 |
57 |
70.1 |
82.4 |
99.5 |
118.9 |
144.1 |
172.0 |
205.8 |
- Which company’s growth could be modeled by a linear function, and which by an exponential function?
- For the company with exponential growth:
- What was the growth factor?
- What is an equation that represents the relationship between year and revenue?
- For the company with linear growth:
- What was the rate of change?
- What is an equation that represents the relationship between year and revenue?
- For each business, use technology to make a scatter plot of the data and graph the equation. If the equation does not look like a good model for the data, adjust it until it is a good model.