The quality of an organization’s business continuity plan (BCP) will directly influence how well it performs during a crisis. For example, the city of Springfield, Tennessee, suffered a ransomware attack in 2016. See the story, Springfield City Hall Recovers From Ransomware Attack.

It was good that the city was able to reinstall its data from backup instead of yielding to the hackers, but the network was still down for several days. A more effective BCP may have kept things up and running throughout the process of recovery.

Find two recent examples where an organization didn’t perform well through a crisis because of its BCP:

1. Explain fully the incident that occurred.
2. Describe how it affected the organization.
3. Give your opinion and suggestions of how the organization could have adjusted its BCP to improve performance.

Remember to provide a reference

Download data on a company’s stock history. From this data, create scatterplots, histograms, and calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of some data points. Write a 3-5-page report including the graphs and descriptive statistics you have created.

Business analytics techniques are used to facilitate decision making by transforming large amounts of raw data into meaningful information. Many businesses rely on analysis of relevant historical data to make key strategic and operational decisions. Therefore, understanding how to use techniques such as graphical representation and descriptive statistics to translate raw data into useful information can be a valuable skill in an organization.

In this assessment and the next, you will have the opportunity to sharpen your analytics skills by locating and interpreting real-life stock data.

You have been learning about how to explore data. In this assessment, you will apply those skills by downloading a practical dataset and creating graphical representations of that data. The work you do in this assessment will lay the foundation for future assessments in which you analyze and interpret those graphical representations. Since the purpose of business analytics is to make sense of large quantities of raw data, this assessment helps you develop skills in applying analytics to business contexts by practicing the exploration and display of data.

In addition to graphical and tabular summary methods, numeric or quantitative variables and data can be summarized numerically using various techniques of description and display.

Descriptive methods, which describe existing data, are also methods for using a subset of the available data to estimate or test a theory about a measurement on a larger group. This larger group is called the population, and the measurement being studied is the parameter. The smaller group, or subset, of the population that is taken in order to make an inference (to make an estimate or test a theory) is referred to as the sample. The measurement taken on that sample is then referred to as the statistic, which is usually the best single-number estimate for the population parameter of interest. Most often, however, the estimate should not be restricted to a single number that would be exactly correct or incorrect. Instead, it is preferable to calculate some range of possible values between which there can be a certain percent confidence that the true population parameter falls. These are referred to as confidence intervals.

You are an analyst in a publicly traded company. Your supervisor has asked you to create graphical representations from raw stock data for a company-wide meeting at the end of the quarter.

Your Role

Your task is to analyze the stock history of the company and create a scatterplot and a histogram. Then you will calculate mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the adjusted daily closing stock price and the stock volume.

It is your responsibility to turn that data into meaningful information using descriptive statistics.

Instructions

• Select a business of which you are a part or in which you have interest and download the raw data on the company’s stock history. Any business that has practical meaning for you is appropriate for this assessment.
• Follow these steps to locate and download stock history from Yahoo! Finance:
  1. Go to Yahoo Finance.
  2. Search for and find the stock of the company you have chosen.
  3. Click on the “Historical Data” tab. Then select the following settings above the table:
     • Select Time Period of one year.
     • Select “Historical Prices.”
     • Select Frequency as “Daily.”
  4. Click Apply.
  5. Click on “Download Data.” Go to the bottom of your screen or your Downloads folder to open the Excel file you just downloaded. Open the Excel file. Check to be sure that you have enough lines to show the whole year. If not, reset the settings at the top of the Historical Data chart and try again.
  6. Once you are sure that you have a year’s worth of data, save the Excel file.
• Using the Excel file with the year’s stock data, conduct descriptive analysis as follows:
  1. Create a scatterplot of the highest stock price (in the column labeled “High”) against time. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you created this graph.
  2. Create a scatterplot of the lowest stock price (in the column labeled “Low”) against time. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you created this graph.
  3. Create a histogram of the adjusted daily closing stock price (in the column labeled “Adj Close”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you created this graph.
  4. Create a histogram of the stock trading volume (in the column labeled “Volume”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you created this graph.
  5. Calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the adjusted daily closing stock price. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you calculated these statistics.
  6. Calculate the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the stock volume. Write a sentence explaining the process by which you calculated these statistics.
• Prepare a report that you would present to your supervisor, including the following:
  • An APA-formatted title page.
  • A one-page introduction of your chosen company, including the company background and practical business context.
  • A section headed Graphical Representations of Data, in which you include the four graphs you created above and a summary of the processes by which you created each graph.
  • A section headed Descriptive Statistics, in which you include the statistics you calculated above and and a summary of the procedures you followed to calculate the statistics.
  • APA-formatted in-text citations and a corresponding references page. Remember to cite the source of your financial data.

Walkthrough: You may view the following media piece to help you understand concepts addressed in this assessment:

• Using Analytic Techniques to Add Meaning to Data Walkthrough.

Additional Requirements

• Length: 3–5 pages, double-spaced. Include a title page and the graphical representations of the data selected.
• Written communication: free of errors that detract from the overall message.

COMPANY: BMW

In the last assessment, you were asked to prepare the first part of your analytics report by creating graphs and calculating some descriptive statistics. In this assessment, you will write your 6-8 page analytics report by interpreting those graphs and statistics, and explicitly connecting those interpretations to implications in the practical business context.

The first step in creating meaningful information from raw data is to represent the data effectively in graphical format and to calculate any required statistics. The second step is interpreting and explaining those graphs and statistics in order to apply them in the business context.

In the previous assessment, you were asked to create the first part of your analytics report by preparing graphs and calculating some descriptive statistics. In this assessment, you will complete your analytics report by interpreting those graphs and statistics, and connecting those interpretations explicitly to implications in the business context.

In business and applied analytics, oftentimes you are interested in drawing conclusions about a population of interest. However, it may not be feasible or practical to gather data on the entire population. In those cases, data is gathered from a sample or subset of the population. Analyses done on the sample are then used to draw inferences regarding the overall population; this mathematic process is referred to as inferential statistics. In this assessment, we begin discussing the topics of sampling and drawing inferences.

All the inferential statistical techniques and methods covered in this course are considered parametric techniques and require certain assumptions to be used and for the results to be reliable, many of which are assumptions about an underlying distribution. Nonparametric techniques require no assumption about underlying distributions and are often used when the assumptions of parametric techniques are not met. Although these are beyond the scope of this introductory course, they are a great option for additional reading and research.

Analytics projects often result in two distinct types of reports or summaries: one tailored to the executive level, which takes the form of a presentation, and the other, a detailed analytics report, which documents an analysis so thoroughly that another analyst can reproduce the analysis exactly. Many times, the latter type is referred to by other departments or analysts wishing to conduct a similar analysis on similar data or by the same analyst who wants to repeat the analysis on a new or revised set of data. In this assessment, you will learn the essential elements that should be included in a report at this level of detail and you will create your own analytics report addressing the business problem you have been working on.

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 the stock prices that you presented graphically in your report for the last assessment. This time your task is to analyze and interpret those graphical representations of the company stocks and to write a report about your findings for your supervisor.

Your Role

You are an analyst in the same business that you used for the last assessment. Your role is to turn data into meaningful information through the use of descriptive statistics and analysis.

Instructions

After reviewing and integrating your instructor’s feedback on your previous assessment, complete the report as follows:

• For each graph you created, write at least one 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, spend at least one sentence explaining what the statistic represents.
  • What does the mean tell you?
  • 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 to inform business decisions?
  • How will you connect those interpretations explicitly to implications for the practical business context?
• Create a 6–8 page report containing:
  • An APA-formatted title page.
  • A one-page introduction of your chosen company that you created in your previous assessment.
  • A section labeled “Graphical Representations of Data” that includes the four graphs you created as well as your interpretations of each graph.
  • A section labeled “Descriptive Statistics” with the statistics you calculated as well as your interpretations of the statistics.
  • A one-page conclusion in which you describe the potential business applications of the data and your interpretations.
  • An APA-formatted references page. Remember to cite the source of your financial data.

Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like:

• Assessment 3 Example [PDF].

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.

MATLAB is a powerful programming platform designed specifically for engineers and scientists. Among many other applications, MATLAB can solve differential equations and create graphs. Download a copy of the MATLAB Users Guide (Links to an external site.) (also located in Course Files). A video demonstration of MATLAB in use can be seen below. More information about using MATLAB can be found online at https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.).

MATLAB can be accessed through the Modules directory, under Course Resources through the Lab Resources button. You can also logon directly at http://lab.devry.edu (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.). After logging on and installing the Citrix receiver if necessary, click the APPS button at the top of the screen and find MATLAB 2019