School of Business, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Major Assignment
Degree of Accounting HEBSACC11
SUBJECT: Quantitative Methods BAC115
CONTRIBUTION TO
OVERALL ASSESSMENT:
This assignment is worth 40% of the overall assessment. 10% will be allocated to the Oral
presentation and 30% to the written component.
DUE DATE: This assignment is due in on Friday, 12th October, 2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online at 5pm via Moodle.
PARTICIPATION AND
SUBMISSION
REQUIREMENTS:
This is a group assignment (of 2 students per group). The written report must be a typed selfcontained
report and professionally presented.
A draft may be submitted up to week 10. The written component of this assessment must be a
maximum of 1800 words.
PLAGIARISM AND OTHER
COMPLIANCE ISSUES:
This report must comply with Melbourne Polytechnic policies and academic conventions for
report writing, plagiarism and referencing. Your teacher will discuss these policies with you and
further information is available on the Melbourne Polytechnic Student Intranet.
ASSESSOR(S): Mei Leng Rankin
Assignment Brief
Created by Mei-Leng Rankin
Page 2 of 5 pages
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This major assignment is a group project. Students are required to demonstrate the following:
• Ability to retrieve relevant data from trusted sources (eg. Use of ABS database or RBA
databases, etc) and understand the nature of the data retrieved. This includes being
able to identify the appropriate graphical/visual tools of representing the data
• Ability to use a standard statistical package (eg. SAS or Microsoft EXCEL) to analyse
and summarise the data.
• Ability to use inferential tools to test possible hypotheses and conduct basic inferences.
• Ability to undertake statistical analysis to establish relationships or patterns in the data
collected.
• Ability to present a 10 minute oral presentation on key findings and recommendations
• Ability to produce a business report describing and interpreting the analyses
conducted.
• Ability to write an analytical report of your findings. (In your written report, you must
provide the following information: A research statement; a project summary, any
underlying theory behind the study, methodology of analysis, results and conclusions.
It is also important that contributors to each section of the written report is noted.)
While your written report should be self -contained, it is important that EXCEL sheets
demonstrating your analyses should be included as part of the Appendix.
• Note: It is important that you do take some time to read Chapters 1 – 5 of your
prescribed text before you start work on this project. The insight gained from
reading these chapters will assist you in planning your project well.
Project Time Line:
• Formation of group and allocation of tasks – by Week 3
• Examine Databases to retrieve relevant data – by Week 4
• Discussion of possible analyses to be undertaken and draft out a research plan. This
Research plan will be the first Oral presentation – by Week 7
• Undertake analyses – by Week 10
• Collation of results and discussion of presentation of findings. The presentation will be
the second Oral presentation. – by Week 12
• Complete written report. – by Week 13
• Note: While this is a group project, students will also be allocated marks for individual
contribution. For example, each group member will have to make an individual oral
presentation plus writing a section of the Overall Report.
PROJECT
BRIEF:
The data analytical part of the project (75% of total project mark) is divided into 3 parts. Each
part tests you on different statistical tools that you have learned in this course. As a group, you
need to demonstrate that you have participated in all parts of this project. Work allocation
should not be divided according to the parts shown here. The instructions that follow refer to
the Data analysis component of your overall project. The other 25 marks will be allocated to the
Introduction and Conclusion sections. Please refer to the marking rubrics to see how marks are
allocated to the entire project. An additional 10 marks will be assigned for proper sourcing and
referencing and another 10 marks for verbal presentation. Total Project will be worth 120
marks.
PART A (40 marks)
Gourmet Delight is a fictitious five star restaurant in the Central Business District (CBD) of
Melbourne. The restaurant has the capacity to sit 100 customers. The restaurant is open for
lunch (12pm – 3pm) and for dinner (6 -11pm) seven days a week. The owner of Gourmet
Delight has been concern that the clientele at the restaurant has been declining in the last six
Assignment Brief
Created by Mei-Leng Rankin
Page 3 of 5 pages
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months due to poor service times for their meals. The owner decided to put all staff through an
extensive training program in the hope of uplifting the standard of their performance. The
owner of Gourmet Delight strongly believes that a serving time of no more than 20 minutes
equates to efficient service.
File: Serving Times Project Sem 2 2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online.xls, Sheet 1, gives the serving times (in minutes) of
the restaurant prior to training and after training. Using EXCEL, obtain the following summary
measures and write a report of your findings:
(a) Summary statistics
(b) Box- whiskers plots
(c) Histograms (If you need help, see Computer Exercise 3)
Six months after the training, several staff left the employment at Gourmet Delight. This caused
concerns to the owner of Gourmet delight. A further random sample of service times was
recorded and stored in the same file (Sheet 2). Use this information to determine if the owner
of Gourmet Delight should be concern.
(Note: In your discussion, you must use the measures of central tendency, variability and
relative standing that you have learned from this course. Your report must be written in such a
way that a non-technical or non- statistical minded person can easily understand your report.)
PART B (15 marks)
To increase patronage to Gourmet Delight, the owner decided to advertise in the local press,
offering special discounts and other promotions such as “two for the price of one” deals.
Advertising expenditure and monthly revenue for Gourmet Delight for a period of 18 months
are given in Sheet 3 of the Serving Times Project file. Using regression analysis, obtain the
necessary outputs, and write a report to determine if advertising expenditure has an impact on
the restaurant’s revenue.
PART C (20 marks)
(a) Restaurant patronage is often measured by what is termed “turns” per table
(successive seatings per day) and by “covers” (seated dining per night). Sheet 4 of the
Serving Time Project file gives the patronage for Gourmet Delight for successive
days in August. The patronage recorded refers to all paying customers over the entire
trading day. Write a brief report of the pattern of patronage. Provide explanation for the
pattern observed. Obtain a simple exponentially smoothed series of the data. (You
need to plot both series – original series and the smoothed series. (5 marks)
(b) Gourmet Delight’s quarterly takings for the past few years are given in Sheet 5 of the
Serving Time Project file. Using trend analysis, obtain a forecast for the four quarters
of 2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online. Write a brief report of your findings. In your report, you need to explain how
you have used trend analysis to obtain the forecasts. (15 marks)
(75 marks)
Assignment Brief
Created by Mei-Leng Rankin
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The entire project assessment is made up of 10% for introduction; 75% for data analysis and 15% for summary and conclusion for
the written report. An addition 10% is allocated for oral presentation of 10 minutes. TOTAL PROJECT Mark = 40% of total
assessment.
The recommended length of this Project is 1800 words (excluding diagrams, tables and Appendices). As a guide: the rubrics will
show you the number of words you need to write per section.
Assignment Brief
Created by Mei-Leng Rankin
Page 5 of 5 pages
This document is subject to change
