FINAL EXAM
BUSINESS ANALYTICS FOR DECISION-MAKING
Duration: 90 minutes
Students are allowed to use reference materials.
PART 1: MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS (3 marks total; 0.5 marks each)
1. What does an influence diagram visually represent?
A) The sequence of steps in a process.
B) The relationships and influences between different entities or variables in a model.
C) The financial performance of a company over time.
D) The organizational hierarchy within a company.
2. Which of the following best describes the purpose and construction of a histogram?
A) A histogram uses line graphs to connect data points and show trends over time.
B) A histogram represents the distribution of a continuous variable by dividing the data into
intervals or bins, with each bin's height indicating the number of observations within that
interval.
C) A histogram is used to compare frequencies of different categories by displaying them as
distinct bar heights, with each bar representing a different category.
D) A histogram visualizes categorical data by arranging categories along the horizontal axis
and showing their frequencies as individual dots.
3. What does a Type II error represent in hypothesis testing?
A. Rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true.
B. Failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is actually false.
C. Incorrectly accepting the null hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is true.
D. Incorrectly accepting the alternative hypothesis when the null hypothesis is true.
4. The data-ink ratio, a concept described by Edward R. Tufte, emphasizes which of the
following principles in data visualization?
A) The ratio of graphical elements to textual explanations in a chart.
B) The proportion of ink used for essential data representation versus ink used for non-
essential elements in a chart or table.
C) The ratio of color usage to grayscale in a data visualization.
D) The proportion of data labels to data points in a graph.
5. What does a positive correlation coefficient (r > 0) indicate about the relationship
between two variables?
A) As one variable increases, the other variable tends to decrease.
B) There is no relationship between the two variables.
C) As one variable increases, the other variable tends to increase as well.
D) The variables are unrelated and show no discernible pattern.
6. Which of the following statements accurately describes variance in a dataset?
A) Variance measures the average deviation of each observation from the median of the
dataset.
B) Variance is calculated as the difference between each observation and the mean, and these
deviations are squared to compute the variance.
C) Variance is the square root of the average of the absolute deviations from the mean.
D) Variance indicates the central tendency of the data by averaging the observations.
PART 2: EXERCISE (7 MARKS TOTAL)
EXERCISE 1 (2 marks)
Professor Smith wants to accurately calculate the grades for the 25 students in his Financial
Management class. He has constructed a spreadsheet, part of which is shown below. The
Course Average is calculated by weighting the Midterm Score and Final Score 40% and 60%,
respectively. Use the VLOOKUP function with the table shown to generate the Course Grade
for each student.
Course Grading Scale Based on Course Average:
Lower Limit Upper Limit Course Grade
0 50 F
51 65 D
66 75 C
78 85 B
86 100 A
Student data
Last name Midterm Score Final Score
Adams 55 70
Baker 62 74
… … …
Young 70 80
a. Use the VLOOKUP function to determine the Course Grade for each student based on
the provided Course Grading Scale.
b. Use the COUNTIF function to determine the number of students receiving each letter
grade.
(Note: Students should use the Excel file named Exercise 1.)
EXERCISE 2 (3 marks):
Hawaiian Electronics, Inc., a producer of smart home devices, has signed a contract with a
major retailer to manufacture three types of smart sensors for a new product line. The
contract specifies the following production quantities:
● Sensor Model S-100: 250,000 units
● Sensor Model S-200: 120,000 units
● Sensor Model S-300: 180,000 units
Hawaiian Electronics can produce these sensors at two plants located in China and India. The
unit production costs and shipping costs are as follows:
Sensor Model China Production Cost India Production Cost
S-100 $1.05 $1.02
S-200 $1.12 $1.09
S-300 $1.45 $1.25
The production capacities are limited at each plant:
● Combined production capacities for S-100 and S-200:
o China: 200,000 units
o India: 170,000 units
● Production capacities for S-300:
o China: 80,000 units
o India: 120,000 units
Shipping costs:
● From China: $0.20 per unit
● From India: $0.12 per unit
Construct constrains and solve a linear optimization model to determine the number the
number of units of each sensor model to produce at each plant in order to minimize the total
production and shipping costs associated with the new contract.
(Note: Students should use the Excel file named Exercise 2.)
EXERCISE 3 (2 marks):
Amazon has announced that the average annual salary for a software engineer at the company
is $92,500. To test whether the average salary of a software engineer at Alibaba Express is
higher than this amount, a researcher collected data from a sample of 25 software engineers at
Alibaba Express.
ID Salary ($) ID Salary ($) ID Salary ($)
1 91,000 11 92,000 21 92,400
2 88,500 12 87,600 22 87,900
3 92,300 13 93,500 23 91,000
4 89,000 14 89,900 24 88,600
5 90,500 15 90,800 25 92,100
6 94,000 16 92,700
7 87,700 17 88,800
8 91,200 18 91,500
9 89,800 19 89,200
10 90,300 20 90,600
a. Formulate the hypotheses to determine whether the average annual salary of a software
engineer at Alibaba Express differs from the average salary reported by Amazon.
b. Using the sample data for 25 software engineers at Alibaba Express provided in the file
named Exercise 3, calculate the p-value with a 5% significance level and draw a conclusion
based on the hypotheses formulated in part (a).
(Note: Students should use the Excel file named Exercise 3.)
