Department of Decision Sciences & Managerial Economics

Faculty of Business Administration

The Chinese University of Hong kong
DSME2020 Statistical Analysis for Business Decisions II
Section G
(Spring Semester, 2012 -2013)
INSTRUCTOR
NAME: Dr. William Lau
Office: Room 909, Cheng Yu Tung Building, No.12, Chak Cheung Street, CUHK
Phone: 3943 8572
E-mail: williamlau@cuhk.edu.hk
Office hour: By appointment
TEACHING ASSISTANT
NAME: Ms. Cathy Pang
Office: Room 937, Cheng Yu Tung Building, No.12, Chak Cheung Street, CUHK
Phone: 3943 1807
E-mail: cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk
Office hour: Wednesday and Friday, 3pm 5pm; or by appointment
COURSE CONTENT
The objective of this course is to give you an understanding of how Statistics operates in
Business and Commerce. It will become clear how pervasive Statistics has become and how
essential the basic concepts are to modern business practice. The statistics learned in this
course will provide the knowledge necessary for you to apply the basic techniques in a wide
variety of circumstances and perhaps more importantly, will enable you to assess the
legitimacy and significance of the many and varied reports that you will come across during
your future career.
REQUIRED TEXTBOOK
William Mendenhall & Terry Sincich, A Second Course in Statistics: Regression Analysis,
7th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall 2012.
REFERENCE TEXTBOOK
Levine et al. Statistics for Managers Using Microsoft Excel, 6th Edition, Prentice Hall 2011.
COURSE ASSESSMENT
Course grade will be based on the following elements:
Class Participation
Group Presentation
Individual Assignment
Examination 1
Examination 2*
Total

10% or 15%
5% or 0%
15%
30%
40%
100%

CLASS PARTICIPATION
You have a choice of 1) having class participation counted as 15% without doing any group
presentation, or 2) having it counted as 10% together with a group presentation that counted
for 5%. Please indicate your preference to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk no later
than 1 February 2013.
Please note that it is PARTICIPATION not ATTENDANCE. You are expected to
actively participtate in class discussions, self learning and providing feedback for class
improvement. Your participation score will be calculated relatively: if your accumulated
participation score is one standard deviation above the class mean, then you will get full
marks; if it equals class mean, you get 60% of the full marks; if it is two standard deviations
below the class mean, you get 0 marks. For any scores in between, we will take linear
approximation. To ease your stress in our very competitive business school, the following are
several safety nets for your participation score:

Accumulated participation score >10 points:

Accumulated participation score >15 points:
Accumulated participation score >20 points:
Accumulated participation score >25 points:

at least 30% of the full marks

at least 50% of the full marks
at least 65% of the full marks
at least 80% of the full marks

The following will help you to get participation scores:

Answer open questions in class (1 3 marks per question)
Answer M.C. questions in class correctly (1 mark per question)
Provide feedback for class improvement (at most 2 marks per week)
Complete voluntary exercises distributed in class correctly (at most 3 marks per week)
Point out the mistakes in our lecture notes within 7 days (1 mark for each mistake)
Raise your hand when I am checking attendance randomly (1 mark each time)
The following will penalize your participation scores:
Your class attendance is below 24 hours throughout the semester (10 marks)
Your mobile rings during the exam (10 marks)
You snore in class (5 marks)
Your mobile rings during the class (first time 2 marks, second time 3.5 marks,
thereafter 5 marks each time)
You continuously chat with your classmates in class (first time 2 marks, second time
3.5 marks, thereafter 5 marks each time)
You are not in the class when we randomly check attendance, but your attendance
has been dishonestly checked on the attendance sheet (first time 3 marks, second
time 5 marks, thereafter 10 marks each time)
Your most up-to-date accumulated participation score will be shown on the attendance sheet
in every class; if you find there are any mistakes in your participation score, please send an
email to Cathy (and c.c. William) to make a correction within 7 days.
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
You are required to submit assigned homework at the beginning of class on the due date.
Late homework will be accepted with a 5-point penalty by 6 p.m. on the due date, beyond
which there will be a penalty of 10 points for each additional day.

GROUP PRESENTATION
This is a voluntary group presentation. If you choose not to do it, your class participation will
be counted as 15%; else if you choose to do a group presentation, your group presentation
will be counted as 5%, while your class participation will be counted as 10%. Please indicate
your preference to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk no later than 1 February 2013.
Groups of 5 or 6 students will be formed. You need to deliver a 10 to 15 minutes presentation
about one of the topics we covered in class. The topic will be randomly assigned to your
group in early February, and the presentation will be held throughout the semester. Please
note that group presentations that deserved for good grades must have sufficient in-depth
real-life examples.
Please submit your group member list (all member names, student ID and group leaders
email and phone number) to Cathy at cathypang@baf.cuhk.edu.hk with email subject
DSME 2020G Group Member List latest by 1 February, else we will assume you decide
not to do the group presentation.
EXAMINATION 1
The first exam will be 100-minute long and is given in class on Tuesday, March 12. It is
closed notes and books, and will be comprised of multiple choices and short questions.
EXAMINATION 2
The second exam is open notes and books and will test your ability to do statistical analysis
using Excel (so it will be conducted in the computer lab). Exam 2 is a comprehensive test
that covers all topics taught in this course. It will be 100-minute long and will be held on
Tuesday, April 23.
No individual make-up examination will be offered in this course.
COURSE STUDY OUTCOMES
After completing this course, students should be able to:
(1) Master a range of basic quantitative analytical tools in business statistics.
(2) Have working knowledge of Excel in terms of basic data analysis tasks.
(3) Be able to interact with econometrician or analyst specialists who speak in the jargon of
statistics.
(4) Develop skills and ability to solve problems that they will need to succeed in a business
environment.

CLASSROOM CONDUCT
Mobile phones and pagers must be switched off, and no eating or drinking is allowed during
class. Most important, please do not constantly talk in class.

POLICY ON SCHOLASTIC DISHONESTY

The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic
work submitted by students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating and plagiarism.
Any related offence will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the
University. Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic
work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy
and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.
3

REMARK
Due to our tight schedule, we may often have to discuss many concepts in a relatively short
time, which may then cause learning inefficiency. I believe this problem can be alleviated if
students can read the assigned chapters ahead of time. Furthermore, I would like to
encourage a free, interactive, and flexible atmosphere to be created in our classroom.
Questions, comments, suggestions and feedback are always welcome, and will be entertained
whenever possible.

COURSE OUTLINE
This is just a tentative course outline. The schedule and topics maybe adjusted during the
semester according to course progress.
Week

Date

Venue

Chapter

Topic

January 15

YIA 201

Chapter 1

Review of Basic Concepts

January 22

Lab 410

Chapter 1 & 3

Review of Basic Concepts

Simple Linear Regression

January 29

Lab 410

Chapter 3

Simple Linear Regression

February 5

Lab 410

Chapter 4

Multiple Regression Models

February 12

February 19

Lab 410

Chapter 4

Multiple Regression Models

February 26

Lab 410

Chapter 5

Model Building

March 5

Lab 410

Chapter 5

Model Building

March 12

To be
confirmed

Exam 1

10

March 19

Lab 410

Chapter 7

Model Diagonostic (Regression Pitfalls)

11

March 26

Lab 410

Chapter 8

Model Diagonostic (Residual Analysis)

12

April 2

Lab 410

Chapter 11

Analysis of Variance (one way)

13

April 9

Lab 410

Chapter 12

Analysis of Variance (two way)

14

April 16

Lab 410

Review

Comprehensive Review

15

April 23

Lab 410

Exam 2

10:30am 11:15am: Voluntary Q&A session

11:30am 1:10pm: Exam

Public Holiday: Lunar New Year

10:30am 11:15am: Voluntary Q&A session

11:30am 1:10pm: Exam