Applying Analytic Techniques to Business
Overview
The first step in creating meaningful information to develop a business report for decision-making. The business report includes the analyzed raw data, effectively presents the analysis results in text and graphical format, as well as calculate any required statistics.
The second step is interpreting and explaining the graphs and statistics in order to understand the impact in the practical business context.
In the last assignment, you were asked to create the first part of your business analytics report by introducing a company, analyzing company stock data, developing graphs, and calculating some descriptive statistics.
In this assignment, you will adjust your business report to minimize limitations of one years worth of data. You will use the same company for this assignment and you will use 5 years of data.
You will also enhance your introduction/business context section of your business report based on your new graphs and your interpretation of the data graphs and descriptive statistics over a five year period. Your interpretation efforts of graphs and descriptive statistics will explicitly connect in the conclusion area. Conclusions and recommendations are the final effort in the development of a practical business report and should be supported by citations. Remember opinion is not allowed.
Scenario
Your supervisor has asked you to prepare a report for the quarterly company meeting. The first part of the task was to download the data and create scatterplots and histograms, and to calculate mean, median, and mode of 5 years of stock prices for your report. Now you must analyze and interpret those graphical representations of the company stock and write the report of your findings and recommendations for your supervisor.
Your Role
You are an analyst using the same company and five years of stock data. Having accessed the company data and placed it in an appropriate graphical format, you must now use descriptive statistics and analysis to develop a report to inform business decisions.
Instructions
After reviewing and integrating your instructors feedback on your previous assignment, complete the report as follows:
For each graph you created, write at least one well supported paragraph interpreting the graph: What does that graph represent? What does the shape of the graph tell you about how the data have changed over time?
For each statistic you calculated, include at least 23 well-supported sentences explaining what the statistic represents:
What does the mean tell you? How do you know?
What does it imply if the median is different from the mean?
What does the standard deviation tell you about the volatility of the data?
Write a new conclusions section in which you explain how these interpretations can be used in the company:
What are some trends about which company leaders should be aware?
How might the information you have provided be used in decision making in the company?
What are other analysts indicating about the stock?
Explicitly connect other analysts comments and recommendations to your interpretations to possible impact to the business context.
Lastly, should your company invest of partner with the company/stock being evaluated?
Create a 6 page report containing:
APA-formatted title page.
12 page introduction of your chosen company that you created in your previous assignment.
Section labeled Graphical Representations of Data that includes the four graphs you created as well as your interpretations of the graphs.
Section labeled Descriptive Statistics, with the statistics you calculated as well as your interpretations of the statistics.
One-page conclusion in which you describe the potential business applications of the data and interpretations.
APA-formatted references page (remember to cite the source of your financial data, analyst comments and support for your interpretations).
Additional Requirements
Include APA-formatted in-text citations where appropriate.
Follow the typical double-spaced analytics report format.
Make sure your written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
