Researchers studied whether corporate political contributions predicted profits (Cooper, Gulen, & Ovtchinnikov, 2007). From archival data, they determined how many political candidates each company supported with financial contributions, as well as each company's profit in terms of a percentage. The accompanying table shows data for five companies.
a. Create the scatterplot for these scores.
b. Calculate the mean and standard deviation for the variable "number of candidates supported."
c. Calculate the mean and standard deviation for the variable "profit."
d. Calculate the correlation between number of candidates supported and profit.
e. Calculate the regression equation for the prediction of profit from number of candidates supported.
f. Create a graph and draw the regression line.
g. What do these data suggest about the political process?
h. What third variables might be at play here?