Defining and Collecting Data

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The past few years have not been kind to Good Tunes
&More (GT&M), a business that traces its roots to Good
Tunes, a music store that sold music CDs and vinyl
records.
GT&M first broadened its merchandise to include home
entertainment and computer systems (the “More”),
and then underwent an expansion to take advantage of
prime location left empty by bankrupt former
competitors. Today, GT&M finds itself on crossroads.
Hoped for increases in revenues that have failed to
occur and declining profit margins due to the
competitive pressures of online and “big box” sellers
have led management to reconsider the future of the
business.
While some investors in the business have argued for an
orderly retreat, closing stores and limiting the variety of
merchandise, GT&M CEO Emma Levia has decided in a
tome of uncertainty to “double down” and accept the
risk of expanding the business by purchasing Whitney
Wireless, a successful three-store chain that sells smart
phones and other mobile devices.
Levia foresees creating a brand new “A-Z” electronics
retailer but first must establish fair and reasonable
price for the privately held Whitney Wireless. To do so,
she has asked a group of analysts to identify, define,
and collect the data that would be helpful in setting a
price for the wireless business. As part of that group,
you quickly realize that you need the data that would
help to verify the contents of the wireless company’s
basic financial statements.
You focus on data associated with the company’s profit
& loss statement and quickly realize the need for sales
and expense related variables. You begin to think about
what the data for such variables would look like and
how to collect those data.
 Statistical Terms
• Variable/Data
• Types of Variable
– Categorical (or qualitative)
– Numerical (or quantitative)
• Discrete variables
• Continuous variables

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 Qualitative Variables
• Gender of students in class
• Political affiliation of faculty in University
• Do you currently have a profile on LinkedIn

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 Quantitative Variables-Discrete
• Number of persons attending a workshop
• Number of cars on road
• Number of employees in an industry
• How many whatsapp messages have you sent
today?

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 Quantitative Variables-Continuous
• Length of steel bars in a production run
• Height of models in a beauty contest
• Weights of people joining a slimming centre
• How long did it take to download the update
for your new mobile app?

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a) The height of the tallest girl in
class

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b) The attitude of managers towards
workers in a factory

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c) The number of laptops in the
University

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d. The extent of time managers spend
on reading emails

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Measurement Scales for Variables

Scale Attributes
• Magnitude
• Equal Interval
• Absolute Zero point

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Types of Measurement Scales
for Variables
• Nominal Scale (Lack of Attributes)
• Ordinal Scale (Magnitude)
• Interval Scale (Magnitude, Equal Interval)
• Ratio Scale (Magnitude, Equal Interval,
Absolute Zero point)

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Nominal Scale (No Ranking Implied)
Categorical Variable Categories
Do you have a Youtube channel Yes No

Type of Investment Cash Mutual Fund Other

Cellular Provider Airtel Vodafone Idea Jio

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 Ordinal Scale (Ranking Implied)
Categorical
Categorical Variable Categories
Ordered Categories
Do you have a Youtube channel Yes No
Variable
Type of Investment Cash Mutual Fund Other
Product Classification V. Unsatisfied Fairly Unsatisfied Neutral
Cellular Provider Airtel Vodafone Idea Jio
Fairly Satisfied V. Satisfied

Faculty Rank Professor Associate Professor Assistant Professor

Course Grade A B C D

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 Interval (Zero point absent)
• Temperature in degrees Celsius
• Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit
• SAT standardised exam score

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Ratio (Zero point present)
• Height
• Weight
• Salary

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For each of the following variables, determine
whether the variable is categorical or numerical. If
the variable is numerical, determine whether it is
discrete or continuous. In addition, determine the
measurement scale:
a) Name of internet service provider
b) Time, in hours spent on surfing last week
c) Whether the individual uses a mobile phone to
connect to internet
d) Number of online purchases made in the month
e) Overall experience of user with the ISP (Excellent,
Very Good, Average, Poor) 19
 Collecting Data
Decisions
• Data Sources
– Secondary
– Primary
• Observation
• Questionnaire
UAE-NRI Satisfaction Survey.pdf
• Population
• Sample
• Sample Frame
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 Sample selection
1. Probability sampling
i. Random sampling
ii. Stratified sampling
iii. Systematic sampling
iv. Cluster sampling

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2. Non-probability sampling
i. Judgment sampling
ii. Convenience sampling
iii. Quota sampling
iv. Snow-ball sampling

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A dealer of Toyota cars sold 20,000 Camry cars last
year. He is interested to know if his customers are
satisfied with their purchases. 3000 questionnaires
were mailed at random to the purchasers. 1600
responses were received. 1440 of these respondents
indicated satisfaction.
(a) What is the population of interest?
(b) What is the variable of interest?
(C) What is the sample?
(d) What is meant by at random here?
(e) The % of satisfied customers is parameter /
statistics

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A researcher is interested to know the number of new
graduates that the Fortune 500 companies intend to hire
in the coming year. She selects 70 of these 500
companies at random and asks a representative of each
company how many college graduates the company is
likely to hire in the following year.
(a)Identify the population from which the sample was
drawn?
(b)Identify the variable of interest?
(c)Identify the sample? How do you think the sample could
have been selected?
(d)In achieving our objectives, we are employing
descriptive statistics of inferential statistics? Explain
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 Testing and Cleaning the data
1. Do the data support or contradict other
evidence we have?
2. How many observations we have?
3. Is the conclusion logical? Have we made
conclusions that data don’t support?
4. Missing values
5. Outliers

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 Revisiting GT&M
 Variables (along with the type of variables)
identified by the analysis team
 Sources of data
 Sample or census
 Sampling frame, sampling method used by
the analysis team

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