Business Statistics
The objective of this project is to provide you with an opportunity to employ in practice the statistical tools and concepts you have learned in this statistics course and to further help in cementing these ideas into part of your skill set as a successful business manager.
TEAMS
You should work in teams of 3-5 people. All team members will receive the same grade, so choose your teammates carefully.
CHOOSING A TOPIC
Your group should choose a topic that interests you and has a business application. Since business is everywhere, this should not be too difficult. You can review the business application exercises at the end of chapter 9 to get a sense of potential topics.
BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES
You should write the paper as if you were the manager(s) of a business. Briefly explain your business and the goal of the study in the opening sentences. Why is the information that you will collect useful to your business?
Before collecting any data, you should come up with the null and alternative hypotheses (remember that what you want to prove goes in the alternative hypothesis). For this project, you should have a two tailed hypothesis test. You may hypothesize about a mean or a proportion. Once your hypotheses are formed, you will collect data and perform various calculations to help you determine the validity of your hypotheses.
GATHERING DATA
You may gather data by surveying others, through observation or using online dataset available in the Internet. If you use an available dataset the analytical expectations are higher. You should have at minimum 100 data elements. All elements should be neatly entered into an Excel spreadsheet and well labeled. Make sure that your paper discusses any possible biases that may exist in your data collection method(s).
ANALYSIS
All analysis should be done on Microsoft Excel. Once you have collected and organized your data, perform the following descriptive statistics:
If you are estimating a mean: You can find these using the Excel functions or the data analysis descriptive statistics tool:
- Sample Mean
- Sample Median
- Sample Standard Deviation
- Create a histogram
If you are estimating a proportion:
- Sample Proportion
- Create a bar or pie chart
After completing the descriptive statistics, you will need to perform a hypothesis test. Since you will have a large sample size and are using Excel to perform these calculations, you need to use the t distribution if you are estimating a mean. You can use the Excel functions or you can use the software that comes with the book to calculate t values and associated probabilities. If you are estimating a proportion, you will, of course, use the z distribution. In this case, you should use Excel to calculate the z value. Following the hypothesis test, calculate a confidence interval and compare it with the results of your hypothesis test.
WRITING THE PAPER
Your paper should be succinct and well written. Use correct grammar and spelling. The paper should be descriptive in nature, meaning that you should describe what you did and what the results mean. The numbers that you include should always have context and explanation. Pretend that you are writing to someone who has only a basic knowledge of statistics.
Your report needs to leave a professional business impression in both writing quality and physical appearance. Do not try to make it unnecessary long by leaving lots of white space or large font size. Your report should at least include the following sections:
Title page: The title page should include all the relevant class information (especially names and section numbers of all group members) plus the title of your project.
Executive summary: The executive summary should give the reader a stand-alone picture of what your study is about and what your results are. This page is usually written after the project is completed but is placed as the first page for executives/professor to gain the essence of your work.
Start with a brief discussion of your business and the goal of the study plus what data collection methods were used and why (actual data and/or surveys should be attached in an appendix). Then, state your results and what they mean for you as a business. How can they help you as managers? Do not spend much time on the details of your analysis in this section-just the results. Having read this page, a person should know all about your project and what steps should be taken based on your findings. Be concise and keep the executive summary to one page.
Analysis: The analysis section should discuss your data collection method(s) and the results of your calculations. Please include your descriptive statistics-numbers and chart(s)-and what they mean, not only numerically, but practically. Then, describe your hypothesis test and your confidence interval calculations and what they mean. You should still use paragraph format while writing the analysis section.
Make sure to include:
- what this analysis is all about,
- justify the parameters you used,
- which hypotheses are getting tested and why,
- which confidence intervals are getting computed and what they mean,
- what confidence level was chosen and why,
- what alpha level was chosen and why, and
- what type of hypothesis was done i.e., lower tail, upper tail, or two tail and why.
Do not include the raw data in this section, but please do include relevant Excel outputs. You may also include your Excel outputs as an appendix and refer to them if you'd like.
Conclusion: The conclusion should describe once again the results and what they imply and any recommendations you may have as a consequence of having gone through the analysis. Also, include possible biases, what you would do differently if you had more resources, what your next step as a business is, any ethical issues surrounding your study, etcetera.
Appendices: Include all raw data as an appendix. Also, if you used a survey to gather data, please include your survey question as an appendix.