Chapter 16.4, Problem 17E

The Ladies Professional Golfers Association (LPGA) maintains statistics on performance and earnings for members of the LPGA Tour. Year-end performance statistics for the 30 players who had the highest total earnings in LPGA Tour events for 2005 appear in the file named LPGATour2 (LPGA Tour website, 2006). Earnings ($1000) is the total earnings in thousands of dollars; Scoring Avg. is the average score for all events; Drive Average is the average length of a players drive in yards; Greens in Reg. is the percentage of time a player is able to hit the green in regulation; Putting Avg. is the average number of putts taken on greens hit in regulation; and Sand Saves is the percentage of time a player is able to get “up and down” once in a greenside sand bunker. A green is considered hit in regulation if any part of the ball is touching the putting surface and the difference between the value of par for the hole and the number of strokes taken to hit the green is at least 2. Let DriveGreens denote a new independent variable that represents the interaction between the average length of a player’s drive and the percentage of time a player is able to hit the green in regulation. Use the methods in this section to develop the best estimated multiple regression equation for predicting a player’s average score for all events.