Part A: ‘The hidden traps in decision making'

Part A of the final project requires you to review & discuss an article, ‘The hidden traps in decision making', from the Harvard Business Review. Make sure to read this article before starting the discussion.

Reference:
Hammond, JS, Keeney, RL & Raiffa, H 2006, ‘The hidden traps in decision making', Harvard Business Review, vol. 84, no. 1, pp. 118-126.viewed 23 October 2013, EBSCO Business Source Corporate Plus database.

Learning how to perform analytics is only step one in the road to making correct decisions. There are many traps along the way that may lead you down the wrong path, even if you know which analytical methodology you need to use. In this article, authors describe five psychological traps you may encounter.

For this review/discussion, select two (2) of the five traps described and do the following:

From your experience, provide a specific example where you believe decision-makers (you or other managers) encountered the trap. Briefly describe the event/situation and explain why it fits the trap definition (In absence of any professional experience, you may have to come up with a hypothetical situation).

Provide specific recommendations to your organisation to identify and prevent the trap in the future.

Part B: ‘Colonial Broadcasting Company'

For the part B of the final project, you will be analysing a Harvard Business Review case listed below and preparing a PowerPoint presentation to present your findings. To assist you in your PowerPoint preparation, you will also be required to use Excel and to show your workings on a separate worksheet (require to submit). Additional information which may assist in marking your assignment can be included in a separate word file (optional but recommended).

In reference to the article below, please note that you are required to answer the questions below, rather than those listed in the case study (i.e. ignore everything in the case after the end of page 6). Wu, G, ‘Colonial Broadcasting Company', HBS Premier Case Collection, November 1993.

Part B questions

The executives at CBC want to see how they are doing in ratings against the other networks and how the ratings will continue to change in the upcoming months. They also want to know if hiring celebrities makes a difference and the impact of fact-based programming compared to hiring celebrities. You will create a PowerPoint presentation to answer the questions below. Remember that your audience is the management of CBC. Make sure your presentation is professional and provides sufficient explanation.

1. Descriptive statistics

What is the average rating for all CBC movies? How about ABN movies and BBS movies? Include a table that shows the average and the other descriptive statistics for the ratings of the three networks (one column for each network).Comment on which network is doing best and what you learn from the other key metrics in the table.

2. Charting

Create a line graph of the monthly average ratings for CBC for the year. Note that there are multiple ratings data for the months; you will need to calculate an average for each month and then plot the averages. After you create the graph, fit a linear trend line, displaying the formula and the r-squared. Explain to the executives if, and how, you can use this time series data to forecast the ratings of upcoming months. How accurate can you expect this forecast to be?

3. Hypothesis testing

Should the CBC hire celebrities for their movies? To answer this question, run a hypothesis test to see if there is a significant difference between the ratings of movies with celebrities versus movies without celebrities. Use the data for CBC movies only and use a 95% confidence. Explain your answer - do not simply say yes or no without referring to the relevant figures.

4. Regression

CBC management has several questions: Which has more impact on a movie's rating, one that is fact based or that it has one celebrity? How much does each of these factors change the ratings? Do you expect a fact-based movie that does not have any celebrities to get better ratings than a fiction movie with one celebrity?

Run a multiple regression where the dependent variable is ratings and the independent variables are celebrity and fact. Use data from all networks, not just CBC movies. How well does this regression analysis explain the ratings? Justify your answers based on the results.