1

Department of Decision Sciences & Managerial Economics

Faculty of Business Administration

The Chinese University of Hong kong

DSME2020 Statistical Analysis for Business Decisions II

Section G

(Spring Semester, 2012 -2013)

INSTRUCTOR

NAME: Dr. William Lau

Office: Room 909, Cheng Yu Tung Building, No.12, Chak Cheung Street, CUHK

Phone: 3943 8572

E-mail: williamlau@cuhk.edu.hk

Office hour: By appointment

TEACHING ASSISTANT

NAME: Ms. Cathy Pang

Office: Room 937, Cheng Yu Tung Building, No.12, Chak Cheung Street, CUHK

Phone: 3943 1807

E-mail: cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk

Office hour: Wednesday and Friday, 3pm – 5pm; or by appointment

COURSE CONTENT

The objective of this course is to give you an understanding of how Statistics operates in

Business and Commerce. It will become clear how pervasive Statistics has become and how

essential the basic concepts are to modern business practice. The statistics learned in this

course will provide the knowledge necessary for you to apply the basic techniques in a wide

variety of circumstances and perhaps more importantly, will enable you to assess the

legitimacy and significance of the many and varied reports that you will come across during

your future career.

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK

William Mendenhall & Terry Sincich, A Second Course in Statistics: Regression Analysis,

7th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall 2012.

REFERENCE TEXTBOOK

Levine et al. Statistics for Managers Using Microsoft Excel, 6th Edition, Prentice Hall 2011.

COURSE ASSESSMENT

Course grade will be based on the following elements:

Class Participation 10% or 15%

Group Presentation 5% or 0%

Individual Assignment 15%

Examination 1 30%

Examination 2* 40%

Total 100%

2

CLASS PARTICIPATION

You have a choice of 1) having class participation counted as 15% without doing any group

presentation, or 2) having it counted as 10% together with a group presentation that counted

for 5%. Please indicate your preference to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk no later

than 1 February 2013.

Please note that it is “PARTICIPATION” not “ATTENDANCE”. You are expected to

actively participtate in class discussions, self learning and providing feedback for class

improvement. Your participation score will be calculated relatively: if your accumulated

participation score is one standard deviation above the class mean, then you will get full

marks; if it equals class mean, you get 60% of the full marks; if it is two standard deviations

below the class mean, you get 0 marks. For any scores in between, we will take linear

approximation. To ease your stress in our very competitive business school, the following are

several “safety nets” for your participation score:

Accumulated participation score >10 points: at least 30% of the full marks

Accumulated participation score >15 points: at least 50% of the full marks

Accumulated participation score >20 points: at least 65% of the full marks

Accumulated participation score >25 points: at least 80% of the full marks

The following will help you to get participation scores:

Answer open questions in class (1 – 3 marks per question)

Answer M.C. questions in class correctly (1 mark per question)

Provide feedback for class improvement (at most 2 marks per week)

Complete voluntary exercises distributed in class correctly (at most 3 marks per week)

Point out the mistakes in our lecture notes within 7 days (1 mark for each mistake)

Raise your hand when I am checking attendance randomly (1 mark each time)

The following will penalize your participation scores:

Your class attendance is below 24 hours throughout the semester (10 marks)

Your mobile rings during the exam (10 marks)

You snore in class (5 marks)

Your mobile rings during the class (first time 2 marks, second time 3.5 marks,

thereafter 5 marks each time)

You continuously chat with your classmates in class (first time 2 marks, second time

3.5 marks, thereafter 5 marks each time)

You are not in the class when we randomly check attendance, but your attendance

has been dishonestly checked on the attendance sheet (first time 3 marks, second

time 5 marks, thereafter 10 marks each time)

Your most up-to-date accumulated participation score will be shown on the attendance sheet

in every class; if you find there are any mistakes in your participation score, please send an

email to Cathy (and c.c. William) to make a correction within 7 days.

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

You are required to submit assigned homework at the beginning of class on the due date.

Late homework will be accepted with a 5-point penalty by 6 p.m. on the due date, beyond

which there will be a penalty of 10 points for each additional day.

3

GROUP PRESENTATION

This is a voluntary group presentation. If you choose not to do it, your class participation will

be counted as 15%; else if you choose to do a group presentation, your group presentation

will be counted as 5%, while your class participation will be counted as 10%. Please indicate

your preference to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk no later than 1 February 2013.

Groups of 5 or 6 students will be formed. You need to deliver a 10 to 15 minutes presentation

about one of the topics we covered in class. The topic will be randomly assigned to your

group in early February, and the presentation will be held throughout the semester. Please

note that group presentations that deserved for good grades must have sufficient in-depth

real-life examples.

Please submit your group member list (all member names, student ID and group leader’s

email and phone number) to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk with email subject

“DSME 2020G Group Member List” latest by 1 February, else we will assume you decide

not to do the group presentation.

EXAMINATION 1

The first exam will be 100-minute long and is given in class on Tuesday, March 12. It is

closed notes and books, and will be comprised of multiple choices and short questions.

EXAMINATION 2

The second exam is open notes and books and will test your ability to do statistical analysis

using Excel (so it will be conducted in the computer lab). Exam 2 is a comprehensive test

that covers all topics taught in this course. It will be 100-minute long and will be held on

Tuesday, April 23.

No individual make-up examination will be offered in this course.

COURSE STUDY OUTCOMES

After completing this course, students should be able to:

(1) Master a range of basic quantitative analytical tools in business statistics.

(2) Have working knowledge of Excel in terms of basic data analysis tasks.

(3) Be able to interact with econometrician or analyst specialists who speak in the jargon of

statistics.

(4) Develop skills and ability to solve problems that they will need to succeed in a business

environment.

CLASSROOM CONDUCT

Mobile phones and pagers must be switched off, and no eating or drinking is allowed during

class. Most important, please do not constantly talk in class.

POLICY ON SCHOLASTIC DISHONESTY

The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic

work submitted by students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating and plagiarism.

Any related offence will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the

University. Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic

work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy

and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

4

REMARK

Due to our tight schedule, we may often have to discuss many concepts in a relatively short

time, which may then cause learning inefficiency. I believe this problem can be alleviated if

students can read the assigned chapters ahead of time. Furthermore, I would like to

encourage a free, interactive, and flexible atmosphere to be created in our classroom.

Questions, comments, suggestions and feedback are always welcome, and will be entertained

whenever possible.

COURSE OUTLINE

This is just a tentative course outline. The schedule and topics maybe adjusted during the

semester according to course progress.

Week Date Venue Chapter Topic

1 January 15 YIA 201 Chapter 1 Review of Basic Concepts

2 January 22 Lab 410 Chapter 1 & 3 Review of Basic Concepts

Simple Linear Regression

3 January 29 Lab 410 Chapter 3 Simple Linear Regression

4 February 5 Lab 410 Chapter 4 Multiple Regression Models

5 February 12 Public Holiday: Lunar New Year

6 February 19 Lab 410 Chapter 4 Multiple Regression Models

7 February 26 Lab 410 Chapter 5 Model Building

8 March 5 Lab 410 Chapter 5 Model Building

9 March 12 To be

confirmed Exam 1

10:30am – 11:15am: Voluntary Q&A session

11:30am – 1:10pm: Exam

10 March 19 Lab 410 Chapter 7 Model Diagonostic (Regression Pitfalls)

11 March 26 Lab 410 Chapter 8 Model Diagonostic (Residual Analysis)

12 April 2 Lab 410 Chapter 11 Analysis of Variance (one way)

13 April 9 Lab 410 Chapter 12 Analysis of Variance (two way)

14 April 16 Lab 410 Review Comprehensive Review

15 April 23 Lab 410 Exam 2 10:30am – 11:15am: Voluntary Q&A session

11:30am – 1:10pm: Exam