Introductory Statistics

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IS: Business Practicum Assignment 1

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Practicum Assignment 1: Knowing Your Data

The first step in moving towards greater profitability is to understand your business, especially the parts making money. In this practicum, you will be calculating various sample statistics, creating appropriate graphics, and interpreting everything for your boss (me).

This is your first practicum activity for this course. It focuses on sample statistics, graphics, and interpretation. These focuses will be common to all of the practicum activities — especially interpretation. It does you absolutely no good to perform the calculations if you do not understand what they mean. In your studies, make sure you can interpret!

And so, you really need to read the expectations carefully. This will help you craft a superior product.

Collecting the Data

You can download the data for this activity here. You should download the data into a folder dedicated to your practicum assignments. Then, in your Practicum One folder, create a copy of the data for use by this particular practicum activity. This will help you keep your analyses separate. Remember that structure is extremely important in your analysis.

This dataset contains ten variables indicating the date: fullDate, day, date (day of month), month, year, and doy (day of year). For each day at my Galesburg restaurant (Such a wonderful view!), The Lamplighter, which is located on the southwest corner of Losey St. and Lake St., I have measured four other variables: grossSales (the amount of sales made that evening, before subtracting expenses), netProfit (the evening’s profit after expenses), customers (the number of customers served that evening), servers (the number of servers starting that evening), and flanbe (whether or not this dish is offered on the menu). The 876 dates run from August 6, 2021, until December 30, 2023.

Analyzing the Data

Calculate the correct measure of center (central tendency) and of spread (variation, dispersion) for the following three variables:

Create appropriate univariate graphics for the following three variables:

Create an appropriate bivariate graphic illustrating the relationship between:

Find one thing in the data that the business owner would find important:

Interpreting the Results

Remember that the most important part of your analysis is interpretation. So, interpret the measures of center in terms of how a business owner may use them. Interpret the correlation and the bivariate graphic in terms of how a business owner may use them. Interpret that one important thing in terms of how a business owner may use it.

Interpret cleanly and clearly. Use only the words you must use. Explain fully.

Checklist

In additional to the general checklist (see the Overview), here is the particular checklist for this practicum activity.

  • Sample statistics included:
    • Measure of center for the gross sales
    • Measure of variation for the gross sales
    • Measure of center for the net profit
    • Measure of variation for the net profit
    • Measure of center for the number of customers
    • Measure of variation for the number of customers
    • Correlation between the gross sales and the number of customers
  • Graphics included:
    • Univariate graphic of the gross sales
    • Univariate graphic of the net profit
    • Univariate graphic of the number of customers
    • Bivariate graphic of the relationship between the number of customers and the gross sales (which should be on the y-axis?)
  • Important thing included:
    • graphic about the important thing
    • statistics about the important thing
  • Interpretation:
    • Shows understanding of the measures of central tendency
    • Shows understanding of correlation
    • Shows understanding of the needs of the restaurant owner
  • Additional Notes:
    • all R Code is included in the appendix
    • there should be no code in the prose
    • in the prose, use the names of the variables (e.g., net profit), not their codes (e.g., netProfit)
    • in the code, use their codes (e.g., netProfit)
    • make sure the code is properly commented (you saw an example of this in the first activity)

As always

Check the example to see what a passable submission looks like. (This example is C-level, not A-level; some things are wrong and some things are missing.)

What can you do to make it better for your boss? How can you convey the information easier and clearer? How can you help your reader/boss understand what you see in the data? That is the key to successful writing.

Make sure you are presenting your results fully and in a meaningful manner. Note that this example covers some different variables and data. Its purpose is solely to give you an acceptable structure for your submission.

Remember the purpose of these practicum activities. You are presenting your analysis to a business audience. This means style counts. I am grading you in terms of style as well as content. With that said, does your boss want something pretty if it is wrong?