Question

A biologist took a count of the number of fish in a particular lake, and recounted the lake’s population of fish on each of the next six weeks.

Find a quadratic function that models the data as a function of x, the number of weeks. Use the model to estimate the number of fish at the lake on week 8.
Week Population
0 350
1 353
2 383
3 437
4 518
5 625
6 758

P(x) = 13x^2 – 10x + 350; 917 fish
P(x) = 13x^2 – 10x + 350; 1,102 fish
P(x) = 18x^2 + 10x + 300; 1,252 fish
P(x) = 18x^2 + 10x + 300; 1,532 fish