Question: How many corn plants are too many? How much corn per acre should a farmer plant to obtain the highest yield? To find the best planting rate, do an experiment: plant at different rates on several plots of ground and measure the harvest. Here are data from such an experiment:
(a) Is yield or planting rate the explanatory variable? Why?
(b) Make a scatterplot of yield and planting rate.
(c) Describe the overall pattern of the relationship. Is it a straight line? Is there a positive or negative association, or neither? Explain why increasing the number of plants per acre of ground has the effect that your graph shows.