LO1. Evaluate business and economic data/information obtained from published sources.

Programme

Higher National Diploma in Business

Assignment Brief Ref

REF: 19-20-U31-A4.1

Unit Number And Title

Unit 31 Statistics for Management

Unit Level

Level 5

Assignment Title

The Role of Statistics in Evaluating Business and Economic Data

Submission Instructions

Use Microsoft office 2016

·         Font: standard Times New Roman (Headings CS) font.

·         Line spacing: 1.5-line spacing.

·         Margins: (Narrow) 0.5 centimetres’ margin on the left-hand side of the page and a

·         0.5 centimetres’ margin on the right-hand side.

·         Page numbers: in the footer “go to insert > Page Number > Bottom of page > Plain Number 2”

·         Headings: use 16-point Times New Roman (Headings CS) BOLD for first level headings, and 14-point Times New Roman (Headings CS) for second level headings. If a third level heading is required, use 12-point Times New Roman (Headings CS).

·         Cover Page: use ABCHorizon Cover page (should be a title of program, Unit number and title, Submitted by, Registration Number, Assignment No and Title, Instructor’s Name, Centre Number and Date) sequentially.

·         Declaration Form: you fulfil and Sign the declaration form.

·         Table of Content: use Table of content after Declaration form (you m

·         use "Automatic table of content" by go to references > Table of content > automatic table 2

·         Labelling and Numbering: make sure that any diagrams, tables, screen shots, PowerPoint slides, etc. are labelled and numbered appropriately. For example, (Table 1 Income Statement), (Fig 3 Time Series) … etc.

·         Check Spelling: also grammar and punctuation, and ensure that you proof read your assignments, before submitting, because the MS Word auto checking software doesn`t always highlight every mistake.

·         Plagiarism: the work you submit must be in your own words. If you use a quote or an illustration from somewhere you must give the source. Do not use Wikipedia, UK Essay or any unacknowledged sources as a reference

Submission instructions

Referencing: use accurate Harvard referencing and include a bibliography. (Citation and Referencing), you must use “references” by go to references > Bibliography > references. Add references at the end of report. Include a list of references at the end of your document. You must give all your sources of information.

LMS: upload your evidence into ABCHorizon e-learning Platform.

Learners  Should  Submit  work  as  exclusively  his/her  own and  should  be  based  on originality.

Learners should strictly follow the submission deadline and submit assessment on time.

All Assignments Elements and presentations (References, reflective report, case study handout, content, etc.) should adhere to the ABC template.

Learners will be given only one opportunity for re-submission of their assessment.

Learning outcomes covered

LO1.  Evaluate business and economic data/information obtained from published sources.

LO2.  Analyse and evaluate raw business data using number of statistical methods.

Business scenario

In order to open a new plant to increase the foreign direct investment, the board of directors in Renault Corporation requires a feasibility report to justify the decision. For this, the company aim to predict the demand level on Renault cars in the next few years and to achieve this, they aim to determine the optimal capacity of the new plant. Therefore, in order to make the right decision they consulted Evaluating and Monitoring department to collect relevant business and economic data. The survey considered the following areas: GDP Per Capita Current $ (annual), Population Growth Rate % (annual), Cars’ Sales (annual) (data are available in National Economy Data Excel sheet) from Turkish Economic Data.

Furthermore, in order to get more data, Marketing-Research department prepared a questionnaire in which they asked the individuals the following closed- ended questions:

1.       What is you preferred car?

2.       Your preferred car’s price compared to other brands is: Very expensive? Expensive? Neither expensive nor cheap? Cheap or very cheap?

3.       Your preferred car’s price compared to the brands quality is very high, high, reasonable, low, or very low?

4.       What is your current disposable income?

5.       What is your neighbourhood?

6.       What is your educational qualification? (Data available in Questionnaire data Excel sheet)

The financial and operations managers in one of the existing Renault cars’ accessories stores located in Zeytinburnu that want to predict the money amount that every customer spends per shopping trip. The Monitoring & Evaluating department has adequate historical data to consider standard deviation of population as known at the value of 400 Turkish Lira. The financial manager asked the Monitoring & Evaluating department to collect a random sample of 100 customers’ expenditure spent per shopping trip.

Job/Role

Organizations in all industries increasingly rely on data to make critical business decisions—which new products to develop, new markets to enter, new investments to make, and new (or existing) customers to target. They also use data to identify inefficiencies and other business problems that need to be addressed. In these organizations, the job of the data analysts is to assign a numerical value to these important business functions so performance can be assessed and compared over time. But the job involves more than just looking at numbers: An analyst also needs to know how to use data to enable an organization to make more informed decisions by interpreting data and analysing results using statistical techniques.

As a business and economic data analyst in Renault Corporation, you have been asked to produce a report about business and economic data evaluation where you have to achieve the following:

Assignment Brief

1.       Provide  a  critical  evaluation  of  different  business  data/  information  by applying different data analysis methods considering data types, sources and sufficiency,

a)       the importance of converting data into information,

b)       and the significance of different data analysis methods to investigate the relationships between different dataset variables such as:

c)       the relationship between cars’ sales & GDP growth date,

d)       the relationship between cars’ sales & population growth rate, the relationship between respondent’s income & his/her opinion about the car’s price,

e)       And the relationship between respondent’s education level & his/her preferred car and to help Renault Corporation determine the expected demand level.

2.       Analyze and evaluate Renault cars’ sales data in Mersin and Bursa by:

a)       Applying descriptive data analysis for each of them. And show how you can use the results of analyzing these two data series to determine the city where the sales were more stable.

b)       Evaluating the feasibility of calculating measures of central tendency and measures of variability for the questionnaire and sales data to generate useful information that can help the managers understand the market conditions and make the right decisions.

3.       Evaluate the differences in application between inferential statistics and measuring associations by:

a)       Applying inferential statistics (sampling) to suggest an interval that can contain the mean of customers’ money amount spent per shopping trip in Renault care accessories store during the next two months according to the data available in the random sample (data is available in “Customers` Purchases Sample” sheet of Excel file). The financial manager asks for significance level for mean of 1% and 5%. Compare and interpret the results.

b)       Applying measuring association between each of the two cost items and sales amounts in Mersin branch (you can use Excel to run simple linear regression analysis and show scatter diagram). Depending on P value, determine whether the relationship between commercials costs and sales amounts or between training costs and sales amounts is statistically significant at the significance level of 5%. (data is available in Sales Training & Advertising Data sheet of the Excel file).

4.       Critically evaluate the differences between descriptive, confirmatory, and exploratory analysis by:

a)       Explaining why researchers generally depend on exploratory method when they run qualitative statistical studies?

b)       Suggesting an appropriate Null and Alternative hypotheses to be tested in order to study the relationship between training expenditure and sales amounts and using the results of simple linear regression analysis between these two variables to test these hypotheses.

c)       Explain applying which analysis method in task 3(b) is more appropriate between confirmatory and descriptive analysis.

Links to other units

This unit links to the following related units:

Unit 05: Management Accounting

Unit 06: Managing a Successful Business Project Unit 25: Principles of Operations Management Unit 11: Research Project

Unit 13: Financial Reporting

Assessment Criteria

Pass

Merit

Distinction

LO1 Evaluate business and economic data/information obtained from published sources

P1 Evaluate the nature and process of business and economic data/information from a range of different published sources.

M1 Critically evaluate the methods of analysis used to present business and economic data/information from a range of different published sources.

LO1 & 2

D1 Critically evaluates the differences in application between methods of descriptive, exploratory and confirmatory analysis of business and economic data.

P2 Evaluate data from a variety of sources using different methods of analysis.

LO2 Analyse and evaluate raw business data using a

number of statistical methods

P3 Analyse and evaluate qualitative and quantitative raw business data from a range of examples using appropriate statistical methods.

M2 Evaluate the differences in application between descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and measuring association.