Step 1 :Given the prices and bids data as follows: prices = [21, 23, 29, 43, 50] and bids = [1, 2, 4, 5, 7].
Step 2 :Calculate the sum of the prices (sum_x) and the sum of the bids (sum_y). We get sum_x = 166 and sum_y = 19.
Step 3 :Calculate the sum of the squares of the prices (sum_x2) and the sum of the squares of the bids (sum_y2). We get sum_x2 = 6160 and sum_y2 = 95.
Step 4 :Calculate the sum of the products of paired data (sum_xy). We get sum_xy = 748.
Step 5 :Calculate the correlation coefficient (r) using the formula: \(r = \frac{n \cdot \Sigma xy - \Sigma x \cdot \Sigma y}{\sqrt{(n \cdot \Sigma x^2 - (\Sigma x)^2) \cdot (n \cdot \Sigma y^2 - (\Sigma y)^2)}}\). We get r = 0.9636176976435222.
Step 6 :Calculate the mean of the prices (mean_x) and the mean of the bids (mean_y). We get mean_x = 33.2 and mean_y = 3.8.
Step 7 :Calculate the standard deviation of the prices (Sx) and the standard deviation of the bids (Sy) using the formula: \(S = \sqrt{\frac{1}{n-1} \cdot \Sigma (x - \text{mean}(x))^2}\). We get Sx = 12.735776379946374 and Sy = 2.3874672772626644.
Step 8 :Calculate the estimated slope (b1) using the formula: \(b1 = r \cdot \frac{Sy}{Sx}\). We get b1 = 0.18064118372379778.
Step 9 :Round the estimated slope to three decimal places. The final answer is \(\boxed{0.181}\).