Alex Weller
348
You are planning to sell a used 1988 automobile and want to establish an asking price that is competitive with that of other cars of the same make and model that are on the market. A review of newspaper advertisements for used cars yields the following data for 12 different cars of this make and model. You want to fit a least squares regression model to these data for use as a model in establishing the asking price for your car.
Production Year 1990 1991 1992 1987 1993 1991 1993 1985 1984 1982 1986 1979
Asking Price (in thousands of dollars) 6.0 7.7 8.8 3.4 9.8 8.4 8.9 1.5 1.6 1.4 2.0 1.0
The computer printouts for three different linear regression models are shown below.
Model 1 fits the asking price as a function of the production year, Model 2 fits the natural logarithm if the asking price as a function of the production year, and Model 3 fits the square root of the asking price as a function of the production year. Each printout also includes a plot of the residuals from the linear model versus the fitted values, as well as additional descriptive data produced from the least squares procedure.
Model 1
12.0
10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0
75 80 85
Year
90 95
The regression equation is
Price = -58.1 + 0.719 Year
Predictor Coef
Constant -58.05
Year 0.719
Stdev
7.205
0.082 s = 1.255 R-sq = 88.5% t-ratio
-8.06
8.77
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
-0.5
75
-1.0
-1.5
-2.0
80 85 90 95
Fits1
Source DF p Regression 1
0
0
Error
Total
10
11
SS MS F p
121.1 121.1 76.88 0
15.75
136.85
1.58

2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
75 95
Model 2
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-0.1
75
-0.2
-0.3
-0.4
-0.5
80 85 90 95
80 85
Year
90
Fits2
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
75
The regression equation is
Price = -14.9 + 0.185 Year
Predictor Coef
Constant -14.924
Stdev
1.223
Year 0.18502 0.01392 s = 0.213 R-sq = 94.6%
Source DF SS MS F p t-ratio
-12.21
13.3 p Regression 1
0 Error 10
8.019 8.019 176.77
0.4536 0.0454
0
0 Total 11 8.4726
Model 3
80 85
Year
90 95
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
75
-0.4
-0.6
80 85
Fits3
90 95
The regression equation is
Price = -13.3 + 0.176 Year
Predictor Coef
Constant -13.313
Stdev
1.447 t-ratio
-9.2
Source DF SS MS F p p Regression 1 7.2221 7.2221 113.72 0
0 Error 10 0.6351 0.0635
Year 0.17559 0.01647 s = 0.252 R-sq = 91.9%
10.66 0 Total 11 7.8572 a) Use Model 1 to establish an asking price for your 1988 automobile.
Plug in the year (88) into the regression equation, so it would look like: Price = -58.1 +
0.719*88 = $5,170

b) Use Model 2 to establish an asking price for your 1988 automobile.
Plug in the year (88) into the regression equation, so it would look like: LnPrice = -14.9 +
0.185*88 = 1.38. Then e^1.38 (the opposite of LN) = $3,970. c) Use Model 3 to establish an asking price for your 1988 automobile.
Plug in the year (88) into the regression equation, so it would look like: SqrtPrice = -13.3 +
0.176*88 = 2.188. Then square that number (the opposite of square root) = 2.188^2 =
$4,790. d) Describe any shortcomings you see in these three models.
Although the correlation coefficients are all quite large, the residual plots all show a distinct pattern, which means that neither fit is the correct one for the data. e) Use some or all of the given data to find a better method for establishing an asking price for your 1988 automobile. Explain why your method is better.
From the plot of Model 1 it is clear that a better fit for the data would be two lines instead of one. The first one would be least-squares regression line on the years prior to 1986 and would be valid only for these years, while the other one would be the regression line on the years of 1986 and later, and would be valid for those years. In this case, any pattern in the residual plot would disappear and the asking price of the 1988 automobile could be determined from the second line of the fit.