Question

s

Answer 1

Have you plotted the points?

Answer 2

Can you use the Draw button here to sketch the curve that you've plotted?

Answer 3

Here are examples of quadratic (in blue), exponential decay (in purple) and exponential growth (in olive). Which one resembles your curve?

Answer 4

I've done a plot here connecting the points with dashed straight lines.

Note that you've got some symmetry in your points, and the curve appears to have a minimum value. Which of those three equation types has symmetry, and a minimum (or maximum) value?

Answer 5

A quadratic (read: parabola) is the only one that will fit your points. With a modicum of algebra it is possible to figure out that the curve that generated the points is \(y = (x-4)(x+4)=x^2-16\), and I've plotted it (in red) as an overlay to the earlier plot of your data points:

Answer 6

The tip-off for me, looking at your data without plotting it, was that you had the symmetry of

(-1,-15)
(0,-16)
(1,-15)

An exponential isn't going to go both up and down like that, and a parabola is symmetrical about its vertex (here (0,-16)).