Assignment
A Detailed Guide for Individual Projects
Write a 4 pagesdata analysis report using theused car data Iattached. The final report should include a report with results of your analysis (description of your objective and how you collected data, did the analysis, your results, interpretation of results, conclusion, and any limitations of the study that you can identify. You can take a look of the sample projects attached.
You can also brush up on Excel.
Here are the steps.
1. Have a good understanding of what your project goal is.The list of topics provides brief descriptions of the objectives and some suggestions. Every project starts with a question that needs to be answered or a hypothesis needing to be tested. The question of the project could be as simple as measuring some consumer behavior or opinion, or testing some relationship between variables. If you are not clear, see me during my office hours or call me during office hours. The management is hungry for insights and it is a risky business for them to base decisions on untested assumptions or gut feelings. Consider the goals of the following projects.
a. Used car pricing. What are the effects of mileage, model, make, age of the car on the selling price? The goal here is to predict the vehicle price (dependent variable) based on mileage, model, make, and age. The end results should enable us to estimate a used car's worth just like Kelly Blue Book does.
2. Collect Data and organize them for analysis. For descriptive research using data from primary or secondary sources, the analysis includes averages, percentages, cross-tabulations, correlations, and regression results to name a few. We are not doing analysis for the sake of analysis, but use it to generate the insights needed to answer the project question(s).
Data should be entered such that each row contains information about the unit of analysis. If the data is coming from a survey of individuals, then each line of data is representing all the information collected from that individuals. The questions in the survey then becomes the column of the data. Consider the examples below.
a. Sample Used Car Data
|
ID (car #)
|
Make
|
Model
|
Year
|
Color
|
Mileage
|
Price
|
|
1
|
Ford
|
Focus
|
2007
|
Black
|
100,000
|
9,000
|
|
2
|
Chevy
|
Malibu
|
2010
|
White
|
85,000
|
10.500
|
|
3
|
Nissan
|
Altima
|
1998
|
Gray
|
150,000
|
7,500
|
|
4
|
Honda
|
Civic
|
2011
|
Red
|
55,000
|
11,000
|
3. Check data for accuracy and make sure you have all the variables for statistical analysis. Certain statistical analyses need recoding of variables. For example, regression analysis requires you to recode nominal (also called categorical) variables such as brands, city, color, into dummy variables (as shown in class). The number of dummy variables you need per nominal variables is the number of categories in that variable, minus one. For example, there are four colors in the Car data. You need dummy variables for Black, White, and Gray. Which one you leave out is optional. The table below shows what the dummy variables look like.
|
ID
|
Make
|
Model
|
Year
|
Color
|
Black
|
White
|
Gray
|
Mileage
|
Price
|
|
1
|
Ford
|
Focus
|
2007
|
Black
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
100,000
|
9,000
|
|
2
|
Chevy
|
Malibu
|
2010
|
White
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
85,000
|
10.500
|
|
3
|
Nissan
|
Altima
|
1998
|
Gray
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
150,000
|
7,500
|
|
4
|
Honda
|
Civic
|
2011
|
Red
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
55,000
|
11,000
|
As you can see, the dummy variable (in red font) simply tells you presence (value of 1) and absent (0) of that feature. You will need to create dummy variables for Make and model, in similar fashion.
4. Analyze data. The statistical procedure to use will depend on the project goal. You would only need to analyze text data (transcripts of interviews, focus groups etc.). Since the gas price and car price data deals with prediction (descriptive research design), we need numerical analysis and regression model seems best suited for the task. I
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.
Attachment:- Data-Used-Car.rar