Concepts and Terminology of Statistics Applied to Business Decision Making Projects
Project 1-
Assignment Description
One of the products that Company W makes is snack foods. The research and development department of Company W has developed a new formula for one type of snack food that is cheaper to make than the current formula. They want to test the new formula with consumers. They want to see if consumers can tell the difference between the old and new formulas. You propose to conduct this test and analyze the results in line with Widge Corp's approach to gathering statistical data and use it to form business intelligence decisions. You first need to explain the process to senior management at Company W. You advocate using an unbiased sample of consumers in their test, so that Company W is randomly selecting people based on the following: age; whether or not they have kids; where they live; how often they buy snack foods; and whether or not they already buy the current product.
Prepare a presentation that addresses the following:
- List at least 3 qualitative attributes of the snack food about which they might want to ask consumers. Make sure at least 1 of them is nominal.
- For each attribute that is ordinal, assign names for the endpoints of a 5 point rating scale.
- Explain the difference between nominal and ordinal data.
- Explain how nominal and ordinal data relate to a rating scale.
- List at least 2 quantitative attributes of snack food that the scientists might want to measure.
- Explain the difference between interval and ratio data.
- Include in your presentation the concept of business intelligence.
- Include in your presentation the difference between a population and a sample.
- Note why it is important to avoid bias when conducting research (see note below).
Reading Assignment - Use the Library to read the following article:
Williams, S., & Williams, N. (2007). The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann. Chapter 6. Business Intelligence In the Broader Information Technology Context.
Read Bowerman, O'Connell, Orris, & Porter
Chapter 2: Descriptive Statistics: Tabular and Graphical Methods
Chapter 4: Probability
Chapter 5: Discrete Random Variables
Chapter 10: Statistical Inferences Based on Two Samples
Assignment Objectives -
Apply methods of data aggregation and reduction to business data in a manner that reveals insight about underlying pattern and key parameters of the data set.
Determine appropriate sampling methodologies for business settings and situations.
Project 2 -
Assignment Description
Company W is testing a sales software. Its sales force of 500 people is divided into four regions: Northeast, Southeast, Central, and West. Each salesperson is expected to sell the same amount of products. During the last 3 months, only half of the sales representatives in each region were given the software program to help them manage their contacts. The Northeast using the software sold 165 and the group with no software sold 100, The Southeast with software sold 200 and the group with no software sold 125.
The Central groups with software sold 175 and the group with no software sold 125. The West group with software sold 180 and the group with no software sold 130. Using this data calculate the Chi Square statistic.
The VP of Sales at WidgeCorp, who is comfortable with statistics, wants to know the possible null and alternative hypotheses for a nonparametric test on this data using the chi-square distribution. A nonparametric test is used on data that are qualitative or categorical, such as gender, age group, region, and color. It is used when it does not make sense to look at the mean of such variables. (You can refer to the article for this phase for further information.)
The following information may be helpful in understanding Chi Square and Hypothesis testing:
Chi Square / Hypothesis Testing
Please review this helpful video. The presenter uses the "flip of the coin" and the "role of the die." These are examples and analogies used in the CTU resources.
The following are assumptions you might make in this assignment that might make the assignment more helpful and make the responses more uniform:
- Continue to use the Widgecorp context. Assume the salespersons are test sales of snack foods or drinks.
- Additionally, assume you have the same number of salespersons in each region.
Reference -
Bozeman Science. (2011, November 13). Chi-squared test [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXPBoFDqNVk
Reading Assignment -
Read Bowerman, O'Connell, Orris, & Porter
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Business Statistics
Chapter 2: Descriptive Statistics: Tabular and Graphical Methods
Chapter 3: Descriptive Statistics: Numerical Methods
Chapter 4: Probability
Chapter 5: Discrete Random Variables
Chapter 6: Continuous Random Variables
Chapter 7: Sampling and Sampling Distributions
Assignment Objectives -
Explain the applications and limitations of statistical hypothesis testing as applied to business situations.