Reference no: EM132307400

Business Modelling and Analysis Assignment -

Objectives - In this assignment you are expected to develop a business report that will be presented to a senior manager of a human capital management company. The report should be informative but concise and follows a specific structure that allows the document to be easily read and understood.

This assignment provides students with opportunity to:

• combine statistical analysis and report writing skills to prepare a concise, non-technical business report,
• draw a random sample to complete statistical analysis,
• develop and enhance computing skills, specifically the use of the built-in functions in MS Excel and MS Word,
• apply statistical techniques to a data set, and
• reinforce taught concepts including descriptive statistics, sampling and estimation, hypothesis testing, correlation and regression.

Background - Margaret is the CEO of a Human Capital Management company in Melbourne. She has recently attended a TED Talk in which Michael Green discussed the importance of the 2030 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. Michael presented challenges that countries around the world would face to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals and elaborated on the importance of the Social Progress Index in that process (please watch two videos posted on e-tivity 7.5, What are the UN Sustainable Development Goals? and How we can make the world a better place by 2030?). After the seminar, Margaret decided to further study the importance of the Social Progress Index and compare countries based on their performance at each sub category of this index.

For that purpose, Margaret asked Jason, a newly appointed accountant, to perform the analysis. Margaret downloaded 2018 Social Progress Index data set (available on e-tivitiy 7.5), passed it to Jason and asked him to run several analyses listed below. There are 50 variables under 12 categories for 182 countries in this data set. For the purpose of analysis, Margaret asked Jason to concentrate on categories with odd numbers (which are highlighted in yellow in the dataset).

They are:

Category 1: Nutrition and Basic Medical Care

Category 3: Shelter

Category 5: Access to Basic Knowledge

Category 7: Health and Wellness

Category 9: Personal Rights

Category 11: Tolerance and Inclusion

Presentation of a business report -

You are going to help Jason in developing a report that addresses Margaret's concerns. Since Margaret is not very familiar with statistical terms, try to not just quote statistics or analysis results, but explain what they mean. In general, do not include formulae, calculations, definitions of statistical terms or discussions on how graphs are constructed in the report. Where appropriate, these may be included in the appendices. Follow the Harvard Style Guide (available on e-tivity 5.4) for all in text references, reference lists and bibliographies. It is important that the values that have been calculated are correctly analysed, discussed and interpreted. The written description of the main features of the tables and graphs should be presented. The emphasis will be on the computation of statistics and construction of graphs, as well as on interpretation of analysis. The assessment should be in one single Microsoft Word compatible document and should be written in 12 point font. It is expected that all work submitted, will have been edited for spelling, grammar and clarity.

Tasks - Most of your statistical calculations should be carried out using Excel only and you will use Microsoft Word and Excel to complete this assignment.

1. Select a Random Sample

Select a random sample of size 100 from the given 182 countries (as demonstrated in videos of e-tivity 1.1). Remember that 182 countries constitute the population of interest and do not calculate any parameters such as mean and standard deviation from the population. Then from each category with an odd number (categories 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11), select one variable only. For example, under category 3, Shelter, there are four variables. They are:

• Availability of affordable housing
• Access to electricity
• Quality of electricity supply
• Household air pollution attributable deaths

You need to select only one of them based on your preference for this category. As a result, each student will have a different sample that includes different variables. After this process, you will have a data set with a total of eight variables (including Countries Names and Continent) and 100 observations corresponding to each variable. If you have variables with missing values in your sample, you are allowed to remove those observation (delete the entire row that has a missing value). In that case your sample will be below 100 observations, which is acceptable. You will use this sample data to complete tasks 2 to 5.

2. Descriptive Statistics

Use appropriate data summary methods to describe the variables in your sample. At this stage, you only concentrate on seven variables and exclude Countries Names. For each of the seven remaining variables, you need to have a graph and a table and descriptions for both. Use an appropriate graphical and/or summary statistical technique based on the type of variable. These techniques include:

Tabular Techniques: e.g. Frequency tables and Grouped (joint) frequency tables.

Graphical Techniques: e.g. Pie chart, Bar graph, Histogram (avoid three dimensional graphs).

Summary Statistics: e.g. Mode, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation, Range, Coefficient of Variation and Interquartile Range (you do not have to report all of these summary statistics. Choose the most appropriate measures based on your personal judgement).

You will need to choose the most appropriate technique(s) for each analysed variable. Less appropriate/inappropriate techniques will receive fewer/no marks.

For a nominal or an ordinal (discrete) variable, draw a graph and present a frequency table in percentages.

For a ratio or an interval variable (continuous), draw a graph and a summary statistics table.

Try to use different graphs, e.g. pie chart/bar chart or histogram as much as possible for different variables. Do not draw two different graphs for the same variable.

3. Confidence intervals

Estimate the following quantities using 95% confidence intervals. Explain the meaning of your confidence intervals.

i. The average of the variable that you have chosen from Category 3 (Shelter).

ii. The average of the variable that you have chosen from Category 11 (Tolerance and Inclusion).

4. Hypothesis Testing

Margaret has some concerns about the common assumptions regarding social development across countries in different continents. As such, she asked Jason to carry out the following hypothesis tests based on the chosen variables in these categories.

i. It has been argued that the level of Access to Basic Knowledge is higher among American countries than African countries?

ii. It there any difference in terms of Personal Rights between Asian and European countries?

iii. It there any difference in terms of Health and Wellness between European and American countries?

Only present the main elements of your analysis and your important findings in the main section of the report. The computations and Excel outputs should be placed in an appendix.

5. Correlation and Regression

Margaret is interested in the relationships between some of these social variables. Margaret asked Jason to conduct regression analysis on the following variables:

• Nutrition and Basic Medical Care related variables (Category 1) and Health and Wellness variables (Category 7).
• Access to Basic Knowledge related variables (Category 5) and Personal Rights variables (Category 9).

Use these variables to develop two regression models and make sure to provide full discussions on each test. Use your chosen sample for these analyses. You discussions for each test should include:

• a scattergram and full interpretation
• an estimate of the linear regression model
• the coefficients of correlation and determination
• a test of the hypothesis that there is no linear relationship between dependent and independent variables.

Assignment structure -

Presentation

Executive summary

Introduction (about half a page)

Analysis

• DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS (about two pages)
• CONFIDENCE INTERVAL (about half a page)
• HYPOTHESIS TESTING (about one page)
• CORRELATION and REGRESSION (about one and half pages)

Conclusion and limitations (about one page)

Reference list

Appendices

Attachment:- Assignment File.rar