Step 1

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a) The task is to extend the horizontal axis of the graph by getting information from the
Internet.

Table 1 below shows the average price per gallon of conventional regular gasoline per
month from April 2012 until December 2014. The values were obtained by getting the
average of the available data from US Energy Information Administration per month.

Month and Year Average Price
Apr 2012 $3.837
May 2012 $3.643
Jun 2012 $3.465
Jul 2012 $3.379
Aug 2012 $3.668
Sep 2012 $3.801
Oct 2012 $3.653
Nov 2012 $3.380
Dec 2012 $3.256
Jan 2013 $3.255
Feb 2013 $3.605
Mar 2013 $3.648
Apr 2013 $3.501
May 2013 $3.565
Jun 2013 $3.576
Jul 2013 $3.515
Aug 2013 $3.515
Sep 2013 $3.474
Oct 2013 $3.285
Nov 2013 $3.186
Dec 2013 $3.209
Jan 2014 $3.252
Feb 2014 $3.305
Mar 2014 $3.474
Apr 2014 $3.590
May 2014 $3.601
Jun 2014 $3.626
Month and Year Average Price
Jul 2014 $3.539
Aug 2014 $3.425
Sep 2014 $3.354
Oct 2014 $3.120
Nov 2014 $2.875
Dec 2014 $2.488

Table 1: Average Price per Gallon of Conventional Regular Gasoline per Month
Step 2
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The values in Table 1 can be inserted to the existing graph to extend it. Doing so would
result in the graph below

Figure 1: US Average Price per Gallon for Conventional Regular Gasoline from January
2007 to December 2013

Step 3
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b) Since March 2012 until April 2013, it can be observed that the trend of the average
price per gallon is like a sinusoid which increases and decreases. It steadies from April
2013 until September 2013 and starts to follow a sinusoidal pattern again until
September 2014 where it starts to decrease until December 2014.

Generally, since March 2012, there is a relatively more stable average price per gallon
compared to the prior erratic pattern. The average price per gallon is more predictable
and it usually follows a sinusoidal patter which increases around every 5 months.
Step 4
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c) No, the time series does not show a consistent increase in the average price per
gallon during the summer. The summer of 2012 shows an increase while the summer of
2013 shows a relatively stable average price per gallon with minor differences.
Conversely, the summer of 2014 shows a decreasing pattern of average price per
gallon. This means that the price are relatively stable and is not affected by the
seasons.