Data Driven Decision Making

You need to think of an opportunity or challenge your organization or department is currently facing and ask a management question to address it.

Articulate Your Management Question:
1. Identify one management opportunity for improving your organization (or department) or one challenge it is facing. Explain why it is important to address it.
2. State your opportunity/challenge as a management question.

Collect Data
1. Find a dataset that is relevant to your management question. Introduce your dataset and describe it.
2. Choose 4 variables that you are interested in. Explain your choice of 4 variables; explicitly argue how each is related to your management question.

Describe Your Data
1. Identify the type of each variable and describe how they are measured.
2. Describe each of the 4 variables in your dataset by finding their (1) mean, (2) median, (3) mode, (4) range (5) quartiles.
3. Explain thoroughly what the descriptive statistics tell you about each of the variables.
4. Decide which measure(s) of central tendency represent your variables most accurately and why. These will be the measures you will use for your final argumentation.

Visualize Your Data
1. Choose a method to visualize your variables (e.g. pie chart, bar chart, segmented bar chart, stacked bar chart, histogram, frequency table, boxplot, time series plot)
Explain the motivation of your choice.
2. Visually present each of your 4 variables.

Formulate a Hypothesis and Test It
1. Hypothesize a relationship between two of the variables in your dataset. Build an argument about the association you foresee and support it with a minimum of 2 academic articles.
2. Run a hypothesis testing analysis.
3. Describe your results and elaborate on them: Do the results confirm your prediction? If yes, what conclusion can you make? Do they reject your prediction? If yes, how can you explain the result? Your argument should be founded in both analytics – population, sample, variables, procedures, and research – what we already know about the hypothesized relationship.
4. Draw a conclusion on how the hypothesis tests inform your decision on your management question.

Run a Linear and Multiple Regression Analyses
1. Run a linear regression analysis between two of your variables. Interpret the results.
2. Run a multiple regression analysis using all 4 of your variables. Explain which is the dependent variable in your analysis and why. Interpret the results.
3. Elaborate how the multiple regression improves your understanding of the data compared to your linear regression.
4. Draw conclusions about your management question based on your regressions.

Build Your Argument and Propose Recommendations
1. Build a comprehensive argument about your management question referring to the conducted analyses.
2. Make two recommendations for further action in regards to your management question, e.g. emphasize the need for additional analysis or propose a specific action step.

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