2 homework questions

Please answer the following questions using the attachments below:

A manager of a large chain of nationwide sporting goods stores would like to know which of the following factors has the strongest link to sales: Age (median age of customer base in years), HS (percentage of customer base with a high school diploma), College (percentage of customer base with a high school diploma), Growth (annual population growth rate of customer base over the past 10 years), and Income (Median family income of customer base in dollars). Looking at the file WK3_X1.xls what do you conclude? The data stored in the file WK3_X1.xls are the monthly sales totals from a random sample of 38 stores in the franchise. All stores in the franchise and thus within the sample, are approximately the same size and carry the same merchandise. The county, or in some cases the counties in which the store draws the majority of its customers is referred to here as the customer base. For each of the 38 stores, demographic information about the customer base is provided. The data are real, but the name of the franchise is not used, at the request of the company.

Management of a soft-drink bottling company wants to develop a method for allocating delivery costs to customers. Although one cost clearly relates to travel time within a particular route, another cost variable reflects the time required to unload the cases of soft drink at the delivery point. A sample of 20 deliveries within a territory was selected. The delivery times (in minutes) and the number of cases delivered were recorded in the file WK3_X2.xls. An analyst computes the delivery time per case delivered and averages these to get 0.33 minutes. Using this he gives an estimated delivery time of 50 minutes for 150 cases to be delivered. Is this a reasonable delivery time? Explain why or why not. Looking at the data in the file, can you give a better estimate? Make sure that you justify your estimate.