STUDENT NAME REG No LEVEL PROGRAMME SUBJECT: LECTURER: DUE DATE

SHANA VICTOR C1110754N 1.1 Msc Strategic Management QUANTITATIVE MANAGEMENT MR CHINAMASA 25 February 2012

QUESTION: Present a justification for quantitative methods to your organisation.Use one of these topics included in the course outline. a) Data presentation b) Correlational analysis c) Hypothesis testing

DATA PRESENTATION Data is the information that is obtained at the source of recording, this maybe in the form of receipts, tickets, data sheets etc. According to Anscombe and Francis (1973) data sheets are where the data is originally recorded. Original data is called raw data. Data sheets are often hand drawn, but they can also be printouts from database programs like Microsoft Excel or Kaleidagraph. According to Dowdy and Wearden (1983), data presentation is therefore the process of putting results of experiments or activities into graphs, charts and tables. They argue that data presentation is a visual way to look at the data and see what happened and make interpretations. They further suggests that it is usually the best way to show the data to others. Data presentation is a way to show how data can be grouped, be it descrete or continuous data (Crawshaw and Chambers, 2001). The definition shows that data that is collected may not convey any message to others unless or otherwise processed. Various ways of data presentation exist, histograms, charts, line graphs, scatter plots or bar graphs. Below is an example of how data can be presented.

Bar graph A bar graph compares values across categories or treatments. The x-axis gives the treatment values (independent variable), while the y-axis depicts the values of the dependent variable.

The values of the bars can be raw data, totals or means. These sample graphs are of numbers of insects of three different species found in plants growing at different densities. Data presentation from a laymans point of view is a way to show how recorded data can be arranged to convey a meaning within the shortest time possible. For example pictorial presentation, especially pie charts are used to show the contribution of each item to the whole. The values are commonly given as a percent or a proportion. To an illiterate person a better understanding may be drawn by merely looking at the sizes (proportions) of each segment. Data presentation is usually done after an experiment, research or an observation has been conducted. It may be at a Toll gate for example, various type of vehicles may pass through. It is an obvious case that vehicles may pass through rather Interest group such as the Zimbabwe National Road Authority (ZINARA) may need to draw the type and size and their frequencies. This may be required for road maintenance and future planning on issues of growth to determine whether the road require expansion. In simpler terms, as the word suggests, data presentation may simply mean a way to show what has been collected. This may not be the whole data but a resemblance of the results e.g. cumulative totals, percentages, averages etc. ILUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES COMPANY BACKGROUND Harare Water is a Department in the City of Harare and is mandated to supply potable water to Harare and its satellite towns. i.e. Chitungwiza, Epworth, Ruwa and Norton Town Councils with a combined total population of about four million (4 Million) people. It also provide sewerage services to Harare Municipality with a total population of about 2.5 million people. The organisation supplies water from two water treatment plants: Morton Jaffray and Prince Edward Water Works. At the treatment works, various data is recorded such data is daily water production, chemical dosages, monthly accidents that would have been reported, Analytical test results e.t.c. In this assignment water production figures, daily and month revenue collections and water bursts and sewer chokes shall be used as examples. Daily water production (water that is treated and pumped out) readings are recorded with online flow

recorders and forwarded to the Production, Finance Managers and other various departments. An example of data that have been recorded from February 2009 to January 2011: WATER PRODUCTION Ml/Day

Other information that can be used with the above graph is the revenue graph: PERFOMANCE INDICATOR-MONTHLY CASH INFLOW-USD/MONTH

20000.00 18000.00 16000.00

A comparison of the two graphs are more meaningful to management and stakeholders other than presenting two sets of columns with figures. In the department the other forms of data presentation are used as its database consist of more than two and half million. For better reporting classification of residents are put, these are residential and commercial consumers. In Harare seventy five percent (75%) of the consumers are the residential areas while the remaining twenty five percent (25%) is the commercial consumers. The other factor which makes data presentation ideal to the organisation is population size. To present information about residents who owe council money is difficult unless away of presenting the information is prescribed e.g. classification by area to say in High density suburbs, Medium density and Low density suburb so much consumers. Within the organisation, data presentation is employed in presenting daily reports of pipe bursts and repairs within its jurisdiction. Number of busts reported per day and number of bursts repaired per day is a significant factor that is used for evaluation purposes. graph signifies efficiency or inefficiency for that year. In all these examples it is therefore difficult to put the data to a meaningful state without using the discussed ways of showing what transpired. Furthermore the existence of different information needs within the organisation requires different ways of presenting the data. STRENGTHS OF DATA PRESENTATION Simple to analyse as shown above the month of February in 2009 little water was produce as a result little revenue was obtained. Faster to draw conclusions. The information is more concise that the raw data. Continuous data cannot take exact values but can be given only within a specified range. E.g. A survey carried out on speed of vehicles entering Chinhoyi University of Technology. Other important results may be drawn. A comparison of water produced and revenue collected thereof gives birth to a important measure called non revenue water. Non revenue water is the volume of water used in a municipality for which no income is In the annual report a detailed graph is deduced showing monthly results, the highlights on the

derived. To calculate the non revenue water, all billed water is assumed to be paid although it is accepted that payment is a problem in many parts of the country. Pictorial presentation of graphs or charts provides a chance for the illiterate to interpret findings. e.g. at a Police station, graphical presentation of crimes for different times may be drawn. Anyone can therefore see if te rate of crime has reduced as compared to previous times or not even the nature of crime may be shown. LIMITATIONS Data presentation has its advantages and disadvantages. According to Rodgers and Nicewander (1998) the major disadvantage is that original data may be lost. For example power failure may interrupt production for a day, other factors may be poor quality of raw water or even unavailability of chemical. During recording (raw data) all the specifications may be available but when processing some information may be left out. In reference to the above two graphs, February 2009 is the time when the multi currency system was officialised and the majority of people did not pay their dues as they did not have the money. All this information is not available hence it give a lot of questions unanswered. Other disadvantages are: Easily manipulated to yield false results. Fail to reveal some key assumptions, norms, causes or effects. Some data presentation methods may require verbal or written explanations which may not be possible when reporting. Fail to provide a check of the accuracy or reasonableness of calculations. Some methods may reveal little about descriptive statistics, skewness or kurtosis. Some may be inadequate to describe the attribute, behaviour or condition of interest.

JUSTIFICATION The organisation deals with a wide and complex data i.e. from water production, chemical usage, water sales, customer database it is therefore more appropriate for the data to be summarised and presented to the policy makers for quick and fast decision making processes as less time may be spent analysis the meanings of information.

For example the graphs above clearly show where the company did best and where problems where experienced as shown by low production and maybe sales.

REFERENCE 1. Anscombe and Francis J. (1973). "Graphs in statistical analysis". The American Statistician 27: 1721. doi:10.2307/2682899. JSTOR 2682899. 2. Crawshaw J and Chambers J (2001) A Concise Course in Advanced Level Statistics, 4th Edition.Nelson Thoenes Pub. 3. Dowdy, S. and Wearden, S. (1983). "Statistics for Research", Wiley. ISBN 0471086029 pp 230 4. Rodgers J. L. and W. A. Nicewander. Thirteen ways to look at the correlation coefficient. The American Statistician, 42(1):5966, February 1988.