For major league baseball teams, do higher player payrolls mean more gate money? Here are data for each of the National League teams in the year 

. The variable 

 denotes the player payroll (in millions of dollars) for the year 

, and the variable 

 denotes the mean attendance (in thousands of fans) for the 

home games that year. The data are plotted in the Figure 1 scatter plot, as is the least-squares regression line. The equation for this line is 

 .

  Player payroll, x (in $1,000,000s) Mean attendance, y (in thousands) Arizona 87.0 34.81 Atlanta 94.5 39.88 Chicago Cubs 65.3 34.44 Cincinnati 52.6 31.85 Colorado 64.8 40.74 Florida 30.9 15.06 Houston 58.3 37.78 Los Angeles 105.0 37.16 Milwaukee 41.5 19.38 Montreal 39.5 11.48 New York Mets 99.8 34.81 Philadelphia 53.9 19.88 Pittsburgh 36.3 21.60 San Diego 64.1 29.88 San Francisco 59.6 40.99 St Louis 80.7 41.23   Send data to Excel

     Â

    x 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 y 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0          Figure 1 Â

Answer the following:

 

1. Fill in the blank: For these data, mean attendance values that are greater than the mean of the mean attendance values tend to be paired with player payroll values that are _____ the mean of the player payroll values.	Choose one greater than less than
2. Fill in the blank: According to the regression equation, for an increase of one million dollars in player payroll, there is a corresponding _____ of 0.31 thousand fans in mean attendance.	Choose one increase decrease
3. What was the observed mean attendance (in thousands of fans) when the player payroll was 36.3 million dollars?