Semester 2 2024-2025

QTRE311 – Data Analysis

Midterm Assessment – Group Report and Presentation

Marks/ Weighting: Total 100 marks - 20% of the total grade of the course
The Tasks:
 Students will submit a Written Report (15%) detailing their answers, including
calculations. The report should be submitted with a Turnitin report.
 Students are also required to present their work (5%) in a professional manner.
 Late work: Late submission will incur a 10% penalty of total given marks per day.
Weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) are also counted in the total late days.
Instructions for Part A:
 Students will have to form teams of between 6-8 individuals. The deadline for team
formation is Thursday, 06 March 2025. Students who have not formed a team by this
date will be randomly assigned into teams by their academics.
 You are required to submit a report in a Word ile. Please include Excel worksheets that
show all of your calculations in your submission.
 The word limit is 3000 words, excluding reference list, graphs and tables, including in-
text citations. Will not be marked. Please note tables, igures, and pictures should
only be used for summary and supplementary to the main discussions. The
inclusion of main discussions in tables, igures, pictures or similar means is strictly
prohibited, and if caught, the words will be counted towards the inal word count.
 Your report should be formatted appropriately. (A4 page size, Font Style – Times New
Roman, Font Size – Headings 14 and body 12, Line spacing 1.5, Standard Margins,
Headings are required)
 You must add a cover page to the report with your details.
 You need to follow the Harvard Referencing style, format the reference list and add in-
text citations. Information without citations will be considered plagiarism.
 Save your report as Class number_Group number_Report (e.g.
ML47_Group1_Report), the powerpoint ile as Class number_Group
number_Presentation (e.g. ML47_Group1_Presentation), and your Excel workbook
as Class number_Group number_Calculation (e.g. ML47_Group1_Calculation)
 Your team will also have to complete and submit a Peer Review Statement. This peer
review statement will have to be submitted with the group report. As part of the peer
review, all students in a group will be assigned the same marks provided all team
members indicate a 100% contribution within the peer review form. In the event that
any student receives less than a 100% contribution rating from any of their peers,
his/her mark will be lower. See peer review statement for an example calculation.
 Due Date of the Final Report, presentation ile and Excel workbook: after Session
12 and before Session 13

Part B: Presentation
Each group needs to present their work in the last two class sessions.
Length of the presentation: 15 minutes
Time for Q&A: 05 minutes
Assessment details
Following up Case Study: Performance Lawn Equipment PLE. Variable descriptions of the
Purchasing survey are in the last page.
You work for PLE. You would help the management team to solve business problems, make
better decisions to take advantage of business opportunities, and to create more value for the
business. You have been studying Applied Business Analytics and know about the CRoss
Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) framework (see Topic 2 for more
details). You think that you can use this framework to layout a research plan and present that
to the CEO. You really want to make sure this irst project delivers outcomes and value for
PLE. You decided to approach the CEO and tell him that you could do some analysis to help
him. He told you that he heard about business analytics, but he thought it would only be
useful for big companies where they have a large volume of data. He then asked you to
prepare a business analytics plan and present that to him.
Your business analytics plan should consider the stages described in the CRISP-DM
framework. Given you might not have much time to address all business problems, you still
want to present your solid ideas of how you could use available data to address the business
problems that each member in the management team at PLE are facing. You decide it would
be useful to divide your business analytics plan into four different parts: 1. Business
background 2. Data understanding 3. Modelling approach 4. Capability
After deciding on an appropriate structure for the research plan, you decide to collaborate
with your fellow staff members (who are in the same team) to determine whether you need
more information to complete the business analytics plan.
Recognising that you may have 2 questions as you work your way through your business
analytics plan, the CEO has set aside some consultation time to address any questions you
have (if any). However, given that the CEO is time poor, he places the following restrictions
on the questions you can ask:
1. You must submit your questions as team questions. This means that you need to work as
a team to agree on the questions to be given to the CEO.
2. Each team can ask up to two questions.
3. Each question should not have sub-questions in it, and each question should contain no
more than 60 words.
4. Once agreed upon within the team, please email your questions to the CEO’s secretary (the
Unit Coordinator). One person can email, but all other members who participated in the
discussion must be included in the email. If any member in your team does not participate,
then they do not need to be included in the email. Students who do not participate in team
discussion will not be able to ask questions.
5. Individual team members are not allowed to ask any further questions.
After gaining deeper insights into the business problems that PLE faces, you are required to
develop the business analytics plan and present indings to the management team. Please
note you should present indings which are relevant to the two above-mentioned business
questions.
As a standard in the industry, the CRISP-DM framework should be followed in your
presentation to the management board. Particularly, you should present the following
sections in your Research Report.
1- Business Understanding: this phase focuses on understanding the project objectives
and requirements from business perspectives and converting this knowledge into
(data) analytics problems.
2- Data Understanding: this phase involves an initial data collection and proceeds to
activities that familiarise with the data. Descriptive statistics is often conducted to
provide preliminary insights into the data. Hypotheses (if any) should be formed and
analysed to uncover hidden information contained in the data.
3- Modelling: This phase involves the selection and development of analytics techniques
and models (including regression analysis). It is desirable that portions of a data set
are set aside for training and validating the model(s). (Please submit your Excel
showing your work.)
4- Evaluation: This phase involves reviewing and interpreting the analysis results in the
context of the business objectives and success criteria described in the irst phase.
5- Deployment: During this inal phase, the knowledge gained from data analysis is
translated into a set of actionable recommendations. In addition to performing
appropriate analysis, analysts need to understand that effectively communicating the
analysis results to business constituents also plays a key role in a successful analytics
project.
6- Risk/limitations: analysing risk and limitations of the BA plan.

As the Directors do not have much time, hence you would like to summarise entire study
into an Executive Summary (word limit: 500 words) as the irst section in your Final
Research Report. The rest of the report should be less than 2500 words (excluding
references).
Variables descriptions:
 Satisfaction level – how satisfied the purchaser is with past purchases from PLE,
measured using a 0-to-10-line scale 1 (0 = poor, 10 = excellent)
 Usage level – how much of the purchasing firm’s total product is purchased from PLE,
measured from 0% to 100%.
 Delivery speed – the amount of time it takes to deliver the product once an order is
confirmed.
 Price level – the perceived level of price charged by PLE.
 Price flexibility – the perceived willingness of PLE representatives to negotiate price
on all types of purchases.
 Manufacturing image – the overall image of the manufacturer.
 Overall service - the overall level of service necessary for maintaining a satisfactory
relationship between PLE and the purchaser.
 Sales force image – the overall image of PLE’s sales force.
 Product quality – the perceived level of quality.
 Size of firm – size of the purchaser relative to other firms in their market (0 = small, 1
= large)
 Purchasing structure – the purchasing method used in the purchasing company (1 =
centralised procurement, 0 = decentralised procurement)
 Industry – the industry classification of the purchaser (0 = private, 1 = retail)
 Buying type – the nature of the purchase being made (1 = new purchase, 2 = modified
rebuy, 3 = straight rebuy)

1
For the line scale, a 10-centimetre line was drawn between the endpoints (0 and 10), and respondents
indicated their perceptions using a mark on the line, which was measured manually from the left.