Professor Ghosh

Get Project Data Here

Group Assignments

Projects—In General

The purpose of these projects is to provide you a chance to learn how to use the statistical concepts thought in lecture in practical applications that you might need in future careers.

Project One is due on October 3^rd at the beginning of lecture.

Project Two is due on November 5^th at the beginning of lecture.

Project Three is due on December 12^th at the beginning of lecture.

These are computer-based projects. This means you need to use both Excel and a document editing software (we will require you to complete the project in Microsoft Word) to conduct numerical computation and to compose your report of analysis. This also means that each project consists of two parts: text and appendices (appendices come at the end of a report and are not embedded within the text). Note that you need to take this project as a business report as a whole, that is, the text needs to have a cohesive flow in which the analysis matches the numerical support you provide in the appendices. Do not simply answer the questions.

A fair background of Excel is recommended. You textbook as well has handouts we will give you provide well-illustrated step-by-step instructions for all the applications you will need for the projects. They are the best resources when you have problems using Excel. If you feel you need additional assistance in learning the basic functions of Excel, we recommend you purchase and complete the lessons in a book called Learn Excel 2000 by Preston, Preston and Ferrett (published by Prentice Hall).

The data that you will use in the projects was gathered from a real corporation that we have renamed 1^st Financial Corporation. The data were obtained from company records as well as a questionnaire administered to the employees. The questionnaire data are primarily attitude data that ask the employees to judge their attitudes about certain characteristics of their employment experience. Usually the answers are coded on a response scale of strongly disagree to strongly agree. Before starting the project, be sure to see the Variable Explanations sheet for exact definitions of each variable in the data set.

The original questionnaire had many more questions. We have provided you with a subset of the questions as well as a sampling of the responses from employees. Note that different groups have different data sets, but these data sets are all samples from the same population.

The case we would like to focus on these three projects is centered at an application in business, namely human resources management. As the textbook puts it on page 13, human resources management is the functional area of business that deals with the people-related decisions made by a firm. We would like to study how this impacts the performance of the company in various aspects.

Conceptually, the emphasis of each project can be summarized as follows:

Project 1: Descriptive statistics and graphing

Project 2: Probability

Project 3: Estimation and Hypothesis testing.

Project Guidelines

The projects are to be completed in groups of four students. Your TA will discuss group assignments during one of the first two lab sections.

You are to work TOGETHER with your group…it is NOT ACCEPTABLE to split up the project into parts and assign one group member to each part.

You need to work on your projects during the lab time dedicated to the projects. Working diligently together as a team during lab time will count for points in your final project score.

NO LATE PROJECTS WILL BE ACCEPTED (except under the most extreme, documented situations.) All members of the group are responsible for seeing that the project is turned in on time. (This means we will not accept the excuse ‘team member x has the project and didn’t come to class today so we can’t turn in our project’)

You should have a cover page on your project that includes the title of the project, your names, your TA’s name, your section number and your data set number.

All projects must be typed in a standard font (such as Times New Roman) with no smaller than a 10 point font, and no larger than a 12 point font (expect for sections titles) and should be double spaced. Do not write anything in the projects with a pencil or a pen.

Your project must be STAPLED with one staple in the upper left hand corner.

Please read the project requirements carefully—if something is specially required for the project, then you definitely lose points if you leave it out. When there are specific questions asked, be sure to make your answers to these questions clear. You also need to mention and provide and explanation for all “unusual” results.

The answers to the projects need to be written in complete sentences and paragraphs as if you are writing a report to an employer. (i.e. The project should use business language.)

This report needs to be written up assuming that the person reading the report does not have a good knowledge of the data set or the statistical concepts. Don’t treat your readers like your professors—there needs to be some introduction and description of the data and statistics to bring the reader up to speed.

Use readily understandable terms when discussing results rather than speaking “in code”. For example, do not say “Almost half the people were coded 3 or above”. You can see that in order for this to make sense someone has to look up how the data is coded. Instead say “Almost half the people ate at least 10 bananas per week.”

We will deduct points for grammatical and spelling mistakes.

All charts and graphs need to be placed in the appendix that is placed at the end of the project. The charts and graphs need to be properly labeled. Make sure there is a through explanation in the text of the graphs and charts you include in the appendix. All graphs and charts using coded data should include a key explaining the codes.