Introduction

T otal:

Part A:

Marks [15 marks] [50 marks]

FIT5141 – Assignment 3 – Semester 2 2017 Due Date Sunday 11:55pm 22nd October 2017 Data Analysis and Decision Support

This assignment is due by 11:55pm Sunday 22nd October 2017. It is worth 50% of the marks for your final assessment in this unit. A penalty of 10% (of the 20 Marks) per day, including each day of a weekend, will apply for late submission.

This is an individual assignment and must be entirely your own work. Please note the section on plagiarism, cheating and collusion in this document.

Specification

Overview

This assignment builds on the work done in assignments 1 and 2. Specifically, you will develop and implement a quantitative analysis that will aim to answer the business question that you have formulated.

It will have two parts: A: the implementation, and B: the report.

Part A: The implementation will be in MongoDB, R, and Tableau.

Marks: [35 marks]

Part B: Additionally, a report must be written about the implementation and results of analyses.

In this part, you need to implement an analysis of the dataset you selected to answer your business question. The implementation of the analysis needs to have the following components:

• Data stored in MongoDB
• Data analysis done in R
• Optimisation and/or forecasting in R or in an Excel spreadsheet
• Results of analysis must include ALL of the following:

o Tables produced by R
o Charts produced by R, and o Charts produced by Tableau

§ In order to produce charts using Tableau you will need export any of the data to be plotted into a “.csv” file and then opened with Tableau

• The results must be comprehensive enough that are report can be produced according to the outline of the report for part B below.
• The overriding requirement of any business data analysis is whether it is sufficiently complete to be used as the basis for decision-making. Hence:

  o You must answer the question in a way that leads to decisions that could be implemented in practice by the business or organization that may have requested the analysis.

Assignment 3 FIT5141 Semester 2, 2017 1

Part B:

o The answer does not have to be correct (we are not testing you on that.), but has to relate logically to a subsequent decision made by someone based on the analysis. This should be written up in the report in part B below.

This report will describe to the reader what the analysis was, why it was done, and what decisions its results could lead to. The report should be structured along the lines below that set out the minimum required sections (section names can be modified as the student deems appropriate but must be logical and relevant) with each section including coverage as itemized below.

Minimal Report outline:

• Introduction
• Description of the Dataset

o Dealing with data format issues (e.g. text to numerical or date issues)

o Dealing with missing data and addition or removal of fields. • The analysis and why it was done (the business question)

This must include:
o Analysis overview o Summary statistics

• Methodology
This section should describe why and how the analysis was performed including:

o The rational for selecting the particular calculations performed, o The justifications for the data sub-setting choices,
o The justifications for the type of statistics reported
o An explanation of the forecasting or optimisation performed

o The justifications for the types of charts produced • Conclusion

A summary of how the results of the analysis answer the question. Should include:
o Discussion of how the analysis supported the answer to the question
o Questions that couldn’t be answered and what could be done in future to answer them
o The possible decisions that could be made by the organization as a consequence of the

answers received.
• [Optional] Appendix: Technical specifics and other data that does not fit naturally in the main

document