Part I:
This assignment requires you to go to Stock Charts https://stockcharts.com/ and select a chart. After you have selected a stock and your chart, please describe the type of chart you selected and what the information describes.
Part II:
This week I am asking you to develop a survey to collect data on the type of features students at a college (does not have to be Cambridge College) will be looking for in a mobile App, and the type of devices they are using. After you develop the survey I am asking you to go out and survey 35 students/people. Please submit your survey by noon, October 12, 2014 so I may approve it before you collect the data.
Part III:
1. Visit the Statistics exhibit section of the Annenberg/CPB Projects Learner Online web site (Note: You may need to take the What's Your Opinion on Polling survey in order to enter this section of the web site.) https://www.learner.org/exhibits/statistics
The Statistics exhibit has sections on survey questionnaires, random sampling, and margin of error. Based on what you learned in this module:
• What is a margin of error?
• Find and take the online survey What's Your Opinion on Polling
• Then look up the results available at the end of the exhibit. What do the results mean?
• Why is the survey statistically invalid?
• Can you describe three examples of survey data that incorporate margins of error?
2. Cambridge College has hired you to assess the potential of its new mobile app on improving student graduation rates. Initially the College created this app because it is convinced that it will improve student graduation rates.
• What type of questions should Cambridge College ask in determining the accuracy of its assumption?
• How can it estimate if its assumptions for the undergraduate population are correct?
Part IV:
There are several steps in hypothesis testing. For the following problems I have selected 3 actual companies located in Massachusetts.
1. Fidelity Investments is a Boston, Massachusetts institution and among the most diversified financial services companies in the world, offering a full range of product solutions for individual investors, employers, institutions and intermediaries. Fidelity has $4.6 trillion in assets under administration, including managed assets of $1.9 trillion, as of December 31, 2013. The company operates service centers in various cities where customers can call to get answers to questions about their investments. Previously the company studied the distribution of time required for each call. It found that calls are normally distributed, with a mean equal to 540 seconds. The call center manager in Provo, Utah has selected a random sample of 50 calls and wants to determine whether the mean call time is now fewer than 540 seconds after a training program given to call center employees. She can test whether the time has decreased by using the following steps:
2. Founded in 1846 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Hood is a company with more than $2 Billion in annual sales. The company has 15 plants and uses filling machines for its gallon milk containers. There is some variation in the actual amount of milk that goes into the container. The machine can go out of adjustment and put a mean amount either less or more than one-gallon containers. To monitor the filling process, the production manager for the Sacramento plant selects a simple random sample of 16 gallons each day. He can test whether the machine is still in adjustment using the following steps:
3. August Brothers Oil Company is an East Boston oil delivery company that has been in business for more than 15-years. The company delivers home heating oil and does oil burner repairs. The company has an opportunity to invest its profits into either increasing its oil delivery business or oil burner repair business. Last year the company made a profit on average of 21 cents for every gallon of heating oil it sold, and $150.00 profit on every burner it repaired. How can you use hypothesis testing to test these two disparate operations and decide where to invest the company's profit?
Part V:
The statistics t-test allows us to answer this question by using the t-test statistic to determine a p-value that indicates how likely we could have gotten these results by chance, if in fact the null hypothesis were true (i.e. no difference in the population). By convention, if there is less than 5% chance of getting the observed differences by chance, we reject the null hypothesis and say we found a statistically significant difference between the two groups. For your homework this week construct a t-Test for the CC mobile app. You may draw on some of the examples and reasoning in our discussion forum.
Part VI:
In this assignment I am asking you to design an ANOVA test similar to the one we discussed in our discussion forum. Identify the factors and levels in you design. Is it a one factor study or multi factor between subjects design?
Part VIII:
For this homework I want you to replicate your work from the discussion forum and look at consumer confidence and the DJIA from the fourth quarter of 2013. Do you still hold the same belief and assumption you formed when looking at 2008? Why or why not?