Guidance and Requirements
• Assignment 1 consists of one question with total available marks of 100. Please make sure your answer follows a clear and logical approach.
• All calculations must be shown at each stage of the analysis. The computations, analysis and charts should be done in Excel or any other application with similar capabilities (Numbers, SPSS, R, Minitab, STATA, Eviews).
• Your work should be presented and submitted as a PDF file. Please be careful to preserve your original formatting when converting your Excel file into PDF.
• Please make sure your student number is displayed on the first page of your report.
Qualified Writers
Rated 4.9/5 based on 2480 reviews
Assessment Brief
A company is concerned about the variability in sales at its 10 stores. There are thoughts that this variability has to do with the size of the town in which the store is situated. It is also possible that the size of store might affect sales. Another thought is that the experience of the store manager (as measured by number of years working for the company) might have an influence. The data for the 10 stores is given below:
|
Sales
(£000s)
|
Population of town
(000s)
|
Size of store
(000 m2)
|
Number of years’ experience
|
|
67.0
|
20.0
|
4.3
|
12.0
|
|
89.0
|
30.0
|
6.4
|
5.0
|
|
90.0
|
25.0
|
2.1
|
6.0
|
|
154.0
|
36.0
|
3.5
|
3.0
|
|
102.0
|
34.5
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
|
75.0
|
15.0
|
1.7
|
2.0
|
|
250.0
|
65.0
|
12.1
|
1.0
|
|
87.0
|
31.0
|
7.6
|
4.0
|
|
54.5
|
24.9
|
4.4
|
3.0
|
|
69.0
|
18.6
|
4.7
|
1.0
|
Question
Use appropriate statistical techniques to thoroughly investigate the variability in sales.
Required
It is crucial that you carry out a robust statistical analysis as your conclusion will play a major role in a substantial capital investment for the company.
Your professionally presented analysis and report to the Sales Director of the company should include:
(a)
- a rationale for the statistical techniques selected
- a discussion of all the possible techniques you have considered
- any disadvantages or limitations of the approaches selected
(This section will be worth 26 marks.)
(b)
- any assumptions you have made, with detailed calculations and interpretation at each stage of your analysis
- an explanation of any statistical terms used in your analysis
- a discussion plus graphical illustration where appropriate
(This section will be worth 48 marks.)
(c)
- a justification for your final conclusion
- commentary on the data used for this investigation
- recommendations for future studies, that would improve the validity and reliability of the results
(This section will be worth 26 marks.)
(Total 100 marks)
