In 2010, there was an interesting lawsuit about bagels. a company claimed to have created a new way to re-create "brooklyn style" bagels and then reported that another bagel producer had stolen its recipe. a researcher wonders if bagel sales might have been affected simply by the fact of the story making the national news, so she tracks total bagel sales in dollars for one year before and after the news story hits. what type of variable is total bagel sales?