Phone companies in the state of missouri have been debating on whether they should keep pay phones available to the public. the number of functioning pay phones in the state, in thousands, since 1997, is represented on the graph below.

It's not a line, so we rule out the first choice.

It might be the parabola. This particular one has a vertex at x=6506.78/(2(219)) = 14.9 which means it starts going up at that, not really matching that data at the end. But it still might be the best.

The decaying exponential is another good contender, perhaps the best. It seems to match general shape and there's no untoward increase after 15.

The increasing exponential can't be it.

I'm going to go with the decaying exponential, which matches the data and the story.

-9

step-by-step explanation: