27. Fits and Graphics:  Homework

Last revision:  April 15, 1998

Author: YourNameGoesHere

1: Attendance at the Mountain

Here are the attendance records for the first 36 months of operation of a museum at the base of Mt. Rushmore.   The museum's first month of operation was May of 1991.

attend={{1, 248}, {2, 317}, {3, 345}, {4, 326}, 
  {5, 264}, {6, 188}, {7, 98}, {8, 47}, {9, 20}, 
  {10, 48}, {11, 122}, {12, 227}, {13, 309}, 
  {14, 373}, {15, 418}, {16, 380}, {17, 329}, 
  {18, 248}, {19, 165}, {20, 119}, {21, 89}, 
  {22, 119}, {23, 184}, {24, 270}, {25, 366}, 
  {26, 430}, {27, 461}, {28, 440}, {29, 380}, 
  {30, 319}, {31, 217}, {32, 169}, {33, 141}, 
  {34, 170}, {35, 248}, {36, 338}};

ListPlot[attend]

Use the "Fit[]" command to try to build a fitter function for this data.  Hint:  The winters in South Dakota are very cold.  Give the "Fit[]" command a building function that can produce the seasonal variations seen in the data, perhaps with "Sin[]" or "Cos[]".

2: Primitive Graphics

Use graphics primitives to draw a face, a house, or some other equivalent of a scratchpad "doodle".  Be creative, and don't be too reductive in your representation of reality.