Joe is researching the cost of going to college. he sees the table shown.

joe wants to create a mathematical model, f(x), where x represents the number of academic years since 1979-1980, to predict future cost of tuition and fees using data in the table.

which type of function will most closely match the data?
a) decreasing linear function
b) increasing linear function
c) exponential decay function
d) exponential growth function