10.75 College debt versus adjusted in-state costs.
Kiplinger’s “Best Values in Public Colleges” provides a ranking of U.S. public colleges based on a combination of various measures of academics and affordability.19 We’ll consider a random collection of 40 colleges from Kiplinger’s 2014 report and focus on the average debt in dollars at graduation (AvgDebt) and the in-state cost per year after need-based aid (InCostAid).
bestval
10.75
(a) The data are weakly linear and positive. There is one college with a very low InCostAid value. A linear model seems appropriate. (b) Answers will vary because it is difficult to tell from the scatterplot. The actual value is around $650. (c) Because the Colorado School of Mines instate cost falls outside the range for our dataset, it would be extrapolation and likely yield an incorrect prediction.