Linear Analysis Technical Report
BUAD 4306 ~ Quantitative & Statistical Reasoning
Fall 2012
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to practice your skills in linear analysis.
Assignment: Using the provided festival spending data, prepare a technical report that identifies important predictors of single day cash spending at the festival. The report should use tables to summarize the data in a meaningful and appropriate way, and statistical tests that provide evidence of the validity of your conclusions. Your analysis should be comprehensive of the data provided. You must provide interpretation of your results. This interpretation must include a determination of important determinants and an explanation of their empirical relationship to single day cash spending.
Process: On the course website is a dataset with the link “Festival Spending”. Select this link and examine the data.
You will need to prepare the data for analysis.
Once you have prepared the data, calculate descriptive statistics and present the sample summary..
Perform your pre-analysis to identify any issues. Conduct your regression analysis and testing. Perform a post analysis to diagnose any problems. Produce a final equation.
Present your results in proper table format and provide a clear interpretation.
Data and Problem Summary:
The data are single day’s cash spending by traveling parties at a festival. The data includes the following variables:
SPENDING One day’s cash expenditure at festival
#PEOPLE Number of individuals in the party
DAYS Planned number of days in attendance
REASON What is the primary attraction of the festival?
Shows&Music: attending because of the quality or type of music and artists.
Cost: attending because it is a relatively inexpensive entertainment or vacation.
Rides&Attractions: attending for the carnival-style rides and attractions.
Convenience: attending because it is close by and easy to get to.
Wine&Food: attending for the specialty wine and food exhibits, vendors, and tastings.
Technical Requirements:
1. You will prepare the report in a professional format. Use the format that is described in the notes below and on the course website (sample reports). Use what is necessary to complete the report – no more, no less.
2. The report must be typed and of professional appearance as you would prepare for a client.
3. The report is due on the date indicated on the course website. It should be submitted to the dropbox for the last applied analysis assignment.
4. The report is an individual assignment, and must reflect only your work.
Some Notes to Describe the Content of a Report:
The Executive Summary of any business report typically answers three questions: (a) What was the issue that was studied? (b) How was the issue studied (summarize method and sample) and (c) What is/are the major finding(s) and recommendation(s) apparent from results?
The Introduction introduces the issue(s) to be studied and puts it into context. Depending on the nature of the study, the Introduction also sets forth your expectations or hypotheses about what you expected to conclude from the data analysis and why you expected to find those results.
The Methodology section describes your sample and how you gathered and analyzed it (process, not results). It always includes a basic summary of the sample’s overall characteristics before it proceeds to more specific analyses.
The Findings section reports the results of your analyses. In this type of report, it should detail the steps you took for estimating the regression equation as well as your statistical conclusions. This section is not written in hypothesis testing steps, but does include much of the information that is part of hypothesis testing. Include your regression results table in this section.
The Discussion section allows you to relate the findings in context of your issue(s). Often, this section also includes a brief critique of the study itself – that is, it points out its own limitations and flaws so that the reader might know the level of confidence he or she can place in the analysis and conclusions. In this particular report, it is important to interpret your results. Include +/- intervals for each of your coefficient estimates.
The Conclusion section states your key results about the determinants of cash spending at the festival.
Remember à Tables, graphs, charts or figures should be clearly labeled and referenced in the text.
Remember à It is not appropriate to cut and paste statistical output directly from the statistical software program (with the exception of graphs). Format and present the results in a reader-friendly table. (Please pay close attention to this requirement, as it is an automatic 10 pts off for every Excel table output directly pasted into the report.)
Remember à Do not include the raw data in your report.
Remember à If it’s in the table or graph, it should be discussed in the text. Do not leave it to the reader to do his or her own analysis and interpretation.
