BECAUSE WE ARE HAVING A CANVAS ISSUE, YOU WILL SUBMIT THE PDF AND WORD DOC IN OTHER LOCATIONS. THIS IS JUST THE INSTRUCTIONS AND RUBRIC.

Overview:

In week 4 you worked with a data set related to advertising/marketing at car dealerships (209 observations with simple dummy and categorical dummy variables). Specifically, you were provided with data on what each car dealership spent on marketing as a % of its gross sales. You were also given information that described the dealership. You will work with your machine-ready data set and will the concepts of hypothesis testing to see what can be learned from this inferential statistics approach.

This project is a bit structured, in that there are specific questions to answer. You should still craft a report that is visually appealing, well organized, incorporates the technical writing tips covered, and that has an accurate and well explained analysis. The visual look and organizational structure is up to you. But be clear that it is a report for a client and not a set of homework questions. So be sure to craft it that way.

Data/Coding Expectations:

So that it is easy to follow your work, you were asked to follow some guidelines when crafting your machine-ready data set. Before starting Data Analysis #1, you need to be certain that your machine ready data set is okay. You have been provided an document that allowed you to confirm (see announcements). Please make revisions to your data set if necessary before starting on this project.

• Always code YES=1 and NO=0.
• Use the variable names as given to you in the spreadsheet. If you changed them, please change them back to the original labels.
• For now, retain all categories in the categorical dummy variable and we will agree which to omit later, when we move on to project #2. (This makes it easier to put into subgroups.)

Audience:

You are serving as a consultant for the CAPITAL GROUP, a company in Northern Virginia that works with dealerships, sometimes acquiring them and sometimes providing them financial capital. They do have some entry-level analysts on the staff, so you are mainly speaking to them. As such, you need to be clear about what you are analyzing and how you are doing it (ex: what hypotheses are you testing, what level of confidence are you reporting for results, etc.). You may assume that the analysts can follow the statistical work if you lay it out well and are explicit about what you are doing. However, key takeaways should still be noted so that the report is accessible to others who are not statisticians.

Your Task:

1. Your client is not familiar with the data set that you are working with. They want you to start with a discussion of descriptive statistics so that they may get a better sense of the data. They are also curious about which variables might be strongly related to each other. Discuss this sufficiently.

2. Your client would like to see a box plot for the Marketing % variable to get a sense of how it is distributed, whether it is skewed in one direction or not, whether there are outliers, etc. Discuss this sufficiently.

3. Your client would like to see 2 scatter plots: a) Marketing % vs. Distance to lower tax, and b) Marketing % vs. Size (employees). These should be accompanied by a good explanation of what they show.

4. Your client would like you to test some hypotheses. They areinterested in knowing if there is a statistically significant difference in the mean of Marketing % (portion of gross sales spent on marketing) when looking at certain subgroups of dealerships. The client has preconceived notions for some hypotheses but not others. You must provide the relevant hypothesis test (using appropriate notation) for each.

1. 1. Is the mean of Marketing % statistically different when comparing dealerships that are locally owned with those that are not locally owned? (Your client has no prior expectation.)
   2. Is the mean of Marketing % statistically different when comparing dealerships that have 32 or more employees with those that have 31or fewer employees. (Your client has no prior expectation.)
   3. The client assumes that the mean of Marketing % is statistically higher for dealerships in cities than it is for dealerships in rural locations (ignoring suburbs)Confirm if this is/is not true.
   4. The client assumes that the mean of Marketing % is statistically higher for dealerships without road frontage than it is for dealerships with road frontage. Confirm if this is/is not true.

REMINDER: Addressing the hypothesis test questions above requires that you create the relevant subgroups. A quick way to do this is to sort by the dummy variables and then copy and paste into a clean page on your spreadsheet. Name the pages appropriately. (For example, if I have test scores for students, I can sort by a dummy variable called MALE. That means all the males would be together and all the females. I can copy and paste values to a new page.) THERE IS A VIDEO ON SORTING AND ON PASTING VALUES IF YOU NEED TO REVIEW THIS.

4. The client wants to know what the analysis above allows them to conclude about causal stories (cause and effect). In your CONCLUSION, make sure the client understand what they can and cannot conclude from descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing that has been conducted.

In this report you must:

1. Offer a good discussion of descriptive statistics that informs the Capital Group.
2. Craft effective graphs and accompanying discussion that inform the Capital Group.
3. Perform the desired hypothesis tests (t-test assuming equal variance and not "paired" observations bc that is something different) in Excel.
4. Write out your hypotheses for each test that reflects the expectations communicated. They must appear fully specified in the paper in notational form.
5. Create well-constructed tables of Excel results in the paper. (You can decide how to organize the tables.) Remove the stuff that is not relevant for your test (like 2-tailed results if you are running a 1-tailed test).
6. Be clear about level of significance you claim, if you are claiming a significant result.