Marriage age 2003 revisited. Suppose you wanted to predict the trend in marriage age for American women into the early part of this century.
a) How could you use the data graphed in Exercise 1 to get a good prediction? Marriage ages in selected years starting in 1900 are listed below. Use all or part of these data to create an appropriate model for predicting the average age at which women will first marry in 2010.
1900 - 1950 (10-yr intervals): 21.9, 21.6, 21.2, 21.3, 21.5, 20.3
1955 - 2000 (5-yr intervals): 20.2, 20.2, 20.6, 20.8, 21.1, 22.0, 23.3, 23.9, 24.5, 25.1
b) How much faith do you place in this prediction? Explain.
c) Do you think your model would produce an accurate prediction about your grandchildren, say, 50 years from now? Explain.