BN1116 Introduction to Business Analytics

BN1116 Introduction to Business Analytics

Coursework: The Housing Market Case Study

Aim: For this coursework you will act as a junior business analytics consultant working for one of your hometown’s (i.e. the town/city you grew up) estate agency with the aim of carryingout a study for the housing market in your hometown. The manager of the real estate agency wants to obtain a general view of the housing market focusing on the housing prices, type and size of houses for sale.

Data set: You will collect your data from a reliable source (i.e. www.rightmove.co.uk) using the first part of your hometown’s postcode. (e.g. if your postcode is B17 8GH, you should use B17 only to collect the data). All EU and overseasstudentsplease access the file “postcode.xlsx” available on blackboard, which contains the postcode you need to do the research for.

Select information for at least 100 houses making sure that you have a representative sample of different type of houses (flat, terraced, detached, semi-detached), and sizes (i.e. number of bedrooms). For each house collect a maximum of four characteristics such as: price, house type, number of bedrooms, and distance from nearest railway station.

Once you have completed your statistical analysis write a report thatprovidethe manager of the estate agency with the information that he/she needs.But remember that the manager is not a statistician. You should therefore write a report of about 3-4 pages, which will avoid the use of statistical formulas but will explain to the manager what the statistical terms used are.

Statistical Analysis:The report should contain amongst other things the followinginformation

1.    A description of the study, the source of your data, thelimitations and any problems encountered in using the data
2.    Produce evidence of any modification or re-coding ofthe data if needed
3.    At least three visualization techniques to describe the data. One of them should definitely include more than one variables.. If you think that more graphs are needed, please do but they should not exceed more than 1.5 pages. A clear summary of the information obtained from the graphs and the explain their choice of type
4.    A clear summary and table of the descriptive statistics and the information which can be obtained from thesestatistics
5.    Assuming that the housing prices are normally distributed present your manager with the 95% and 99% confidence interval of the average house price per house type and explain their meaning.

You can obtain the average house prices from the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/html/houses.stm)
6.    Undertakethe necessary analysis to produce your manager with a summary on whether the average price of the different type of houses in your data sample is in line with the average price in the UK
7.    Any other analysis that might be useful

Writing the report: The Manager is numerate but has no knowledge of statistics so any use ofstatistics should be explained within the report.However, the report should containonly brief explanation of the technical terms, e.g. “the standard deviation is a measure of the spread of variability of the data about the sample mean”. Avoid the use of technical terns that are not explained clearly.

Marking:Marks will be awarded for both the style of the report (20%) but also the technical analysis ((80%).  A breakdown of the mark is shown below:

Report style                                     20%
(Title, brief summary, numbering of sections, tables and graphs, size)
Data Visualisation                                20%
Descriptive Statistics                                20%
Confidence Intervals    & Hypothesis Testing                 30%
Conclusions                                     10%

Timeline of the coursework:You should start the coursework as soon as possible. A suggested timeline although some steps can take place immediately is:
At the end of week 3: Complete data collection
At the end of week 4: Data visualization
At the end of week 5: Descriptive Statistics
At the end of week 6: Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis testing
At the end of week 10: Submission deadline 7th of December 2012

Feedback: Feedback will be given before and after the submission of the coursework.

Before by having one meetingaround weeks 5-6 with the lecturer (or tutor) todiscuss any issues/questions you may have. Due to the large number of students it may be required to have those meeting in groupsof students rather than onan individual basis.

After the coursework has been submitted feedback will be given in three ways. First, through normal written feedback. Second, the lecturer will produce a summary of the key points that studentsshould need to addressbefore the exams and finally the lecturer will be available to all students for further face-to-face feedback if needed. Again due to the large number of students these sessions may take place in groups of students.

Every effort will be done for the coursework and summative feedback to be produced before the exams.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 12:00pm on 7th of December 2012 (week 10)

This question has been answered.

Get Answer