HA1011 Assessment 2 Applied Quantitative Methods

HA1011 Applied Quantitative Methods

Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines
Trimester	T3 2019
Unit Code	HA1011
Unit Title	Applied Quantitative Methods
Assessment Type	Assessment 2
Assessment Title	Group Assignment
Purpose    of      the assessment (with ULO Mapping)	Students are required to show the understanding of the principles and techniques of business research and statistical analysis taught in the course.
Weight	40 % of the total assessments
Total Marks	40
Word limit	No more than 4000 words
Due Date	Week 10
Submission Guidelines	All work must be submitted on Blackboard by the due date along with a completed Assignment Cover Page.The assignment must be in MS Word format, no spacing, 12-pt Arial font and 2 cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section headings and page numbers.Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately at the end in a reference list using Harvard referencing style.

Assignment Specifications HA1011

Purpose:

This assignment aims at Understand various qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and techniques, and other general purposes are:

1. Summarise numerical data and present it both by means of tables and charts
2. Be able to calculate and interpret descriptive summary measures
3. Develop simple regression models and interpret the regression coefficients
4. Understand basic probability concepts
5. Understand when to apply different distributions, their properties and how to calculate associated probabilities

Assignment Structure should be as the following:

Instructions:

• Your assignment must be submitted in WORD format only!
• When answering questions, wherever required, you should copy/cut and paste the Excel output (e.g., plots, regression output etc) to show your working/output.
• Submit your assignment through Safe-Assign in the course website, under the Assignments and due dates, Assignment Final Submission before the due date.
• You are required to keep an electronic copy of your submitted assignment to re-submit, in case the original submission is failed and/or you are asked to resubmit.
• Please check your email prior to reporting your assignment mark regularly for possible communications due to failure in your submission.

Attempt all the questions (5×8 = 40 Marks)

Question 1

Financial analysts reviewing travel and entertainment costs might have the business objective of determining whether meal costs at city restaurants differ from meal costs at suburban restaurants. They collect data from a sample of 50 city restaurants and from a sample of 50 suburban restaurants for the cost of one meal (in $).

City Restaurant Meal Costs:

25	51	51	63	45	44	45	49	79	55
28	61	66	27	42	46	55	27	32	40
51	28	62	86	55	80	49	36	39	30
53	36	52	55	29	60	42	42	41	51
61	74	67	43	51	40	43	53	90	90

Suburban Restaurant Meal Costs:

33	31	46	50	56	49	46	38	46	34
41	40	37	47	36	46	46	54	39	39
45	28	30	52	30	52	42	46	39	31
55	32	49	55	40	60	42	27	41	48
61	70	74	43	51	40	43	53	80	89

Tasks:

1. Construct a frequency distribution for both type of restaurants using 10 classes, stating the Frequency, Relative Frequency, Cumulative Relative Frequency and Class Midpoint.

(3 marks)

• Using (a), construct a histogram for both types of restaurants.                       (2 marks)
  • Based upon the raw data, what is the mean, median and mode for both types of restaurants?

(3 marks)

Question 2

You are the manager of a supermarket and concerned about a forthcoming reduction in the annual advertising budget proposed by the owner. You manage many products that all require separate marketing strategies, predominantly supported by advertising. To justify your request for a higher advertising budget, you collected data on annual sales and annual advertising expenditure.

Product	Annual Sales ($1000)	Annual Advertising Expenditure ($1000)
1	150	60
2	150	60
3	190	100
4	130	30
5	120	20

6	110	20
7	160	30
8	180	70
9	180	90
10	150	40
11	160	30
12	140	60

Tasks:

1. Is above a population or a sample? Explain the difference.                            (2 marks)
2. Calculate the standard deviation of the annual sales. Show your workings.    (2 marks)
3. Calculate the Inter Quartile Range (IQR) of the annual advertising expenditure. When is the IQR more useful than the standard deviation? (Give an example based upon annual advertising expenditure.)                                                                          (2 marks)
4. Calculate the correlation coefficient. Interpret the correlation coefficient.     (2 marks)

Question 3

(We are using the same data set we used in Question 2)

You are the manager of a supermarket and concerned about a forthcoming reduction in the annual advertising budget proposed by the owner. You manage many products that all require separate marketing strategies, predominantly supported by advertising. To justify your request for a higher advertising budget, you collected data on annual sales and annual advertising expenditure.

Product	Annual Sales ($1000)	Annual Advertising Expenditure ($1000)
1	150	60
2	150	60
3	190	100
4	130	30
5	120	20
6	110	20
7	160	30
8	180	70
9	180	90
10	150	40
11	160	30
12	140	60

Tasks:

1. Explain how you select dependent variable (Y) and independent variable (X) between annual sales and annual advertising expenditure.                                           (2 marks)
2. Calculate AND interpret the Regression Equation (Interpret slope and intercept). You are welcome to use Excel to check your calculations, but you must first do them by hand. Show your workings.                                                                                   (3 marks)
3. Calculate AND interpret the Coefficient of Determination.                              (3 marks)

Question 4

You are the manager of the Holmes Hounds Big Bash League cricket team. Some of your players are recruited in-house (that is, from the Holmes students) and some are bribed to come over from other teams. You have 2 coaches. One believes in scientific training in computerised gyms, and the other in “grassroots” training such as practising at the local park with the neighbourhood kids or swimming and surfing at Main Beach for 2 hours in the mornings for fitness. The table below was compiled:

	Scientific training	Grassroots training
Recruited from Holmes students	18	72
External recruitment	35	12

Tasks (show all your workings):

1. What is the probability that a randomly chosen player will be from Holmes OR receiving Grassroots training?                                                                                                (2 marks)
2. What is the probability that a randomly selected player will be External AND be in scientific training?                                                                                                   (2 marks)
3. Given that a player is from Holmes, what is the probability that he is in scientific training?

(2 marks)

• Is training independent from recruitment? Show your calculations and then explain in your own words what it means.                                                                             (2 marks)

Question 5

You are an investment manager for a hedge fund. There are currently a lot of rumours going around about the “hot” property market on the Gold Coast, and some of your investors want you to set up a fund specialising in Surfers Paradise apartments.

Last Saturday you attended an auction to get “a feel” for the local real estate market. You decide it might be worth further investigating. You ask one of your interns to take a quick sample of 50 properties that have been sold during the last few months. Your previous research indicated an average price of $0.9 million but the average price of your assistant’s sample was only $850 000.

However, the standard deviation for her research was the same as yours at $270 000.

Tasks (show your workings):

1. Since the apartments on Surfers Paradise are a mix of cheap older and more expensive new apartments, you know the distribution is NOT normal. Can you still use a Z-distribution to test your assistant’s research findings against yours? Why, or why not?                                                                                                                                    (3 marks)
   1. You have over 2 000 investors in your fund. You and your assistant phone 35 of them to ask if they are willing to invest more than $1 million (each) to the proposed new fund. Only 9 say that they would, but you need at least 30% of your investors to participate to make the fund profitable. Based on your sample of 35 investors, what is the probability that 30% of the investors would be willing to commit $1 million or more to the fund? (5 marks)

Marking criteria

Marking criteria	Weighting
Summary Statistics and Graphs:Frequency distributionHistogramSummary statistics	8 marks 3 marks marksmarks
Measures of Variability and Association:Differentiating sample and populationStandard deviationRange and IQRCorrelation coefficient	8 marks 2 marks 2 marks 2 marks 2 marks
Linear Regression:Dependent and Independent VariablesEstimating the regression equationCoefficient of determination	8 marks marksmarks 3 marks
Probability:b) c) and d) joint probability and conditional probability	8 marks
5. Probability Distribution	8 marks
TOTAL Weight	40%
Assessment Feedback to the Student:

Marking Rubric

	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory*
Summary Statistics	Demonstration of	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration of
and Graphs	outstanding	of very good	of good	of basic	poor knowledge on
(8 marks)	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	summary statistics
	summary statistics	summary	summary	summary	(1 mark)
	(8 marks)	statistics	statistics	statistics
		(7 marks)	(5 marks)	(3 marks)
Measures of	Demonstration of	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration of
Variability and	outstanding	of very good	of good	of basic	poor knowledge on
Association	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	measures of
(8 marks)	measures of	measures of	measures of	measures of	variability and
	variability and	variability and	variability and	variability and	association
	association	association	association	association	(1 mark)
	(8 marks)	(7 marks)	(5 marks)	(3 marks)
Linear Regression	Demonstration of	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration of
(8 marks)	outstanding	of very good	of good	of basic	poor knowledge on
	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	linear regression
	linear regression	linear regression	linear	linear	(1 mark)
	(8 marks)	(7 marks)	regression	regression
			(5 marks)	(3 marks)
Probability	Demonstration of	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration of
(8 marks)	outstanding	of very good	of good	of basic	poor knowledge on
	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	simple probability
	simple probability	simple	simple	Simple	(1 mark)
	(8 marks)	probability	probability	probability
		(7 marks)	(5 marks)	(3 marks)
	Demonstration of	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration	Demonstration of
Probability	outstanding	of very good	of good	of basic	poor knowledge on
Distribution	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	knowledge on	probability
(8 marks)	probability	probability	probability	probability	distribution and
	distribution and	distribution and	distribution	distribution and	standard normal
	standard normal	standard normal	and standard	standard	distribution (z)
	distribution (z)	distribution (z)	normal	normal	(1 mark)
	(8 marks)	(7 marks)	distribution (z)	distribution (z)
			(5 marks)	(3 marks)

Unsatisfactory^*: 0 mark if not attempted

HA2011 Management Accounting