Module Title

Business Statistics

Assessment Task

Individual Project

Weighting

70%

Word Count

Min. 1500

Due Date

Refer to tutor

Assessment Regulations (delete as appropriate)

· Your student number must appear on all pages.

· Pages must be numbered.

· You are required to add the following declaration on page 2 of the assignment: “I ………… [name] declare that I am the sole author of this assignment and the work is a result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. All references have been duly cited”.

· Your attention is drawn to the institution’s policy on cheating and plagiarism. Penalties will be applied where a student is found guilty of academic misconduct.

· You are required to keep to the word limit set for an assessment and to note that you may be subject to a penalty if you exceed that limit. You are required to provide an accurate word count on the cover sheet for each piece of work you submit.

· For late or non-submission of work by the deadline or an approved extended deadline, a mark of 0NS will be recorded. Where a re-assessment opportunity exists, a student will normally be permitted only one attempt to be re-assessed for a capped mark.

· An extension to the deadline of up to three days for the submission of a piece of assessed work may be granted at the tutor’s discretion.

· The assignment should be word-processed.

· The Harvard Referencing system should be used.

Module Specific Requirements

Learning Outcomes

Demonstrate your understanding of data sampling and collection, and present findings in a meaningful manner.

Analyse and deduce as much as possible, such as Mean, Median, Mode, Standard Deviation, Variation, Coefficient of Variation, and identifying the Correlation and Regression model etc.

Assignment Description

1) Select any company from S&P 500 from Yahoo! Finance

2) Go to Historical Data

3) Select Time Period of 5 years

4) Select Frequency of Monthly

5) Select Apply

6) Select Download to extract the data onto an Excel document

7) Focus on values under High, Low, Adjusted Close and Volume

Analyse and discover if there there is any relationship among the data. If there is, estimate the equation

y = a + bx + e and summarize your results. [Observational data; simple linear regression; good fit with reasonable coefficients and interesting outliers.]

Do collect and record your findings over the period stated above in Excel spreadsheet as you will use this as part of your presentation and report.

You may also include any other information, like charts, from the website as long as you deem relevant and helpful in your work. 

Make a prediction of the values for the following two months after the last available data.

Additional Information – Assessment Guidance Notes

Guidance for writing the report

Using report format

Business reports normally include:

1. Title page, with the author(s), addressee and date

2. Contents list (if any length)

3. Acknowledgements (if appropriate)

4. Summary of the purpose of the research

5. Main and subsidiary sections, sub-titled and numbered

a. This section must demonstrate a clear understanding of the concepts learnt and relevant applications in order to provide a more useful analysis.

6. Conclusions

7. Appendices (if needed)

8. References

You are expected to:

9. Demonstrate clear understanding of what and when suitable statistical formulas are used.

10. Use theories and concepts where possible.

11. Seek evidence as widely as you can, referring to the researched case and wider literature, if applicable.

12. Use diagrams, frameworks, as much as possible.

All sources must be referenced correctly. 

Your report should contain a reference list at the end while also citing specifically relevant academic literature to support your arguments. The final report should not exceed 2500 words including references and appendices. Ensure the pages are numbered. Referencing (Harvard Style. both in-text and bibliography) is crucial in this module and failure to use relevant academic literature would cost the group considerable marks. The use of good grammar and correct spelling is also essential. These and the clarity of your writing will be incorporated into your overall grade for this assignment.

Differentiation

Your ability to efficiently evaluate the interdependencies of the functional areas of the organisation and the relevant strategic choices needed to succeed would differentiate top marks from average.

Formative assessment (carries no marks)

To avoid last minute surprises and for tutor to be able to provide you with effective support, it is expected that every group will update on their progress every Wednesday, from week 2 to week 6. At each time, substantial amount of additional work is expected.

It is essential that your report demonstrates knowledge and understanding acquired from your study of Business Statistics.

Study of Business Statistics means the following:

You are assumed to have read all documents and other material provided on the module Moodle page, such as the module documentation, assessment instructions, information on plagiarism, on Harvard referencing, and so on.

The module proceeds with a series of lectures and seminars that you are assumed to engage with fully as follows.

Lectures explain some key ideas and recommend publications in which these ideas are further explained and discussed. You should aim to understand these key ideas fully and to form. a critical assessment of them. It is unlikely that you will achieve this by simply attending the lecture – you will need to review the lecture slides and your own notes, together with the recommended publications. In addition to explaining key ideas, lectures also act as a guide to further relevant material that is explained less thoroughly in the lecture, but which is explained and discussed in recommended publications that you should read and study independently. Overall, lectures can be viewed as a guide to what you should be reading and learning, and thus as a guide to how you should spend your time in relation to this module.

Assessment Criteria