A chain of parking garages recently offered customers the ability to pay for parking on their mobile phone instead of paying at an office or feeding a parking meter. This is an example of a business making use of the technology known as

1. descriptive statistics quickly describe large amounts of data can predict future stock returns with surprising accuracy statisticians understand non-numeric information, like colors refer mainly to patterns that can be found in data 2. a 15% return on a stock means that 15% of the original purchase price of the stock returns to the seller at the end of the year 15% of the people who purchased the stock will see a return the stock is worth 15% more at the end of the year than at the beginning the stock has lost 15% of its value since it was originally sold 3. a stock purchased on january 1 cost $4.35 per share. the same stock, sold on december 31 of the same year, brought in $4.75 per share. what was the approximate return on this stock? 0.09% 109% 1.09% 9% 4. a stock sells for $6.99 on december 31, providing the seller with a 6% annual return. what was the price of the stock at the beginning of the year? $6.59 $1.16 $7.42 $5.84

(a) what was the opportunity cost of non-gm food for many buyers before 2008? (b) why did they prefer the alternative? (c) what was the opportunity cost in 2008? (d) why did it change?

You are the manager of a large crude-oil refinery. as part of the refining process, a certain heat exchanger (operated at high temperatures and with abrasive material flowing through it) must be replaced every year. the replacement and downtime cost in the first year is $165 comma 000. this cost is expected to increase due to inflation at a rate of 7% per year for six years (i.e. until the eoy 7), at which time this particular heat exchanger will no longer be needed. if the company's cost of capital is 15% per year, how much could you afford to spend for a higher quality heat exchanger so that these annual replacement and downtime costs could be eliminated?