BUSN1010 Analytics in Business Group Assignment Semester 1, 2025 | UoN

BUSN1010 Analytics in Business 

Objectives 

In this assignment, you are expected to develop a business report that will be presented to a senior manager of an investment management company. The report should be informative but concise and follow a specific structure that allows the document to be easily read and understood. This assignment is worth 40% (30% + 10% video presentation) of your final mark. Students are expected to deliver a video presentation. Without the video presentation, no mark will be allocated to either the assignment or the presentation. 

This assignment provides students with the opportunity to: 

• Combine statistical analytics and report writing skills to prepare a concise, non-technical business report,
• Collect relevant data to complete statistical analysis,
• Develop and enhance computing skills, specifically the use of the built-in functions in Microsoft Excel and/or Microsoft Power BI,
• Apply analytics techniques to a data set, and
• Reinforce taught concepts including descriptive statistics, sampling, estimation, hypothesis testing, correlation, and regression. 

Background 

Yvonne is the CFO of a private investment firm in Newcastle. She is currently seeking assistance from a business graduate with expertise in analytics. Consequently, she has reached out to you with a request to conduct a statistical analysis on the monthly returns of stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). You are to analyse four stocks from two different industries under the assumption that these sample stocks are representative of their respective industries. 

Presentation of a Business Report 

You have been requested to prepare an analysis report. Since Yvonne is not very familiar with statistical/analytics terms, try not to just quote statistics or analysis results, but explain what they mean. In general, do not include formulae, calculations, definitions of statistical terms, or discussions on how graphs are constructed in the report. Where appropriate, these may be included in the appendices. Follow the APA referencing style for all in-text references, reference lists, and bibliographies. 

The values that have been calculated must be correctly analysed, discussed, and interpreted. A written description of the main features of the tables and graphs should be presented. 

A.2.Descriptive Statistics - Use Power BI and Excel for this Task 

Use Power BI and/or Excel to develop an appropriate graph. Use Excel to develop summary statistics based on the type of variable. 

Graphical Techniques

Time-series line charts for the price, histogram for the returns

Summary Statistics

Mode, Median, Mean, Standard Deviation, Range, Coefficient of Variation, and Interquartile Range 

You will need to choose the most appropriate technique(s) for the analysis of each variable. Less appropriate/inappropriate techniques will receive fewer/no marks. 

Dashboard - Use Power BI to develop a one-page dashboard, which provides all relevant graphs. The dashboard needs to be presented as a summary for Section I.

B. Section II 

B. 1. Confidence intervals - Use Excel for this Task 

Estimate the following quantities using 95% confidence intervals. Explain the meaning of your confidence intervals. 

• For monthly returns of stocks in Industry 1.
• For monthly returns of stocks in Industry 2.
• For the monthly return of the All Ordinary.

A.2. Hypothesis Testing - Use Excel for this Task 

Carry out the following hypothesis tests for the variables that you have chosen. 

• It has been argued that Industry 1 has higher average monthly returns than Industry 2. Conduct a hypothesis test between Stock 1 from Industry 1 and Stock 1 from Industry 2. Use Excel for this test.
• It has been argued that in Industry 2, Stock 1 provides higher average monthly returns than Stock 2. Conduct a hypothesis test between the monthly returns of Stock 1 and Stock 2 in Industry 2. Use Excel for this test.
• It has been argued that there is no relationship between the monthly returns of stocks in Industry 1. Conduct a hypothesis test between the monthly returns of Stock 1 and Stock 2 from Industry 1. Use Excel for this test. 

Only present the main elements of your analysis and your important findings in the main section of the report. The computations and Excel outputs should be placed in the appendix. 

B.3. Regression - Use Excel for this Task

Conduct regression analyses on the following variables: 

• Monthly return of Stock 1 against the All Ordinary in Industry 1. Use Excel for this analysis.
• Monthly return of Stock 2 against the All Ordinary in Industry 1. Use Excel for this analysis.
• Monthly return of Stock 1 against the All Ordinary in Industry 2. Use Excel for this analysis.
• Monthly return of Stock 2 against the All Ordinary in Industry 2. Use Excel for this analysis.

Assignment Structure

Presentation 

Presentation is an important feature of a business report. The structure of your presentation should include an Executive summary, Introduction, Analysis, and Appendices. Your assignment should contain the following sections:

Executive Summary 

This is your first page and is not to be included in the page count. The executive summary should be a combined form of Introduction and Conclusions.

• Report only the highlights of the findings
• Entice an Executive to read on
• Essentially a lively summary of the main conclusions
• No longer than one page since not counted in the page count, must be on a separate page from the rest of the report. 

Introduction (about half a page) 

This should contain information about what we expect to read in the project. 

• State the purpose of the report, e.g. what you will discuss in the report
• Briefly introduce the companies and their products
• Outline the contents of the report
• Provide a brief description of the methodology
• Describe the source of the data and state its location in the report. 

Analysis 

This section contains a thorough yet non-technical description of all the findings. It details the results that were highlighted in the Executive Summary. No calculation is required here, but appropriate graphs and tables, which are needed to support your discussions, should be included. Your analysis section should contain the following divisions: 

Descriptive Statistics (about three pages) 

You need to provide an appropriate graph, a summary statistics table, and descriptions. You need to put the descriptive statistics table produced by Excel in the appendix and only report selected values that you want to discuss in a smaller table in the body of the report. Take one variable at a time.

Confidence Interval (about half a page) 

"We are 95% confident that................" 

Do not show the method of calculating a confidence interval (calculation details should be reported in the appendices). Do not draw a graph. Report the sample data used for the analysis of this section in the appendix. 

Hypothesis Testing (about one page) 

Clearly define and write out H0, HA, etc. Also report the type of hypothesis (i.e., upper, lower, two-tailed), the test statistic, p-value, t-value, and degrees of freedom. Please clearly write out the conclusion based on the test statistics. Report the sample data used for these analyses in the appendix. 

Correlation and Regression (about two pages) 

Present your scatter plots with a line of best fit included in the graphs. Specify the dependent and independent variables and describe the strength of relationships using R and R-squared values. A full linear regression model should be stated on both graphs and in the discussion. 

Interpret the slope and intercept coefficients and hypothesis test results (t-value, p-value, etc.). Report the sample data used for these analyses in the appendix. 

Conclusion and limitations (about one page) 

All the important findings and results of your work should be presented here in a concise format. Make sure not to present tables or graphs here. In this section, you need to present: 

• The conclusion of your analysis of all sections. It is essentially an expansion of the Executive Summary.
• Limitations of your analysis. In this section, you need to critically evaluate the method and data used in this analysis. What are the potential shortcomings of your conclusions?
• This section ends with a discussion on the ethical implications of statistical methods. What are the ethical elements that need to be considered when reporting the results of statistical analysis? You need to consult the literature for this section. 

Reference list 

Follow the APA for all in-text references, reference lists, and bibliographies (reference lists and appendices are not included in the page count). For more information, please visit the UoN library website. 

Appendices 

• Must be numbered and referred to in the main body of the report.
• Must contain your selection of random numbers and related random data, and any additional calculations and computer outputs for each section.