unit 4 db STATISTICS

Question 1

The MS EXCEL program is equipped with a variety of statistical tools to interpret data that would be useful for a manager of a certain company (Walkenbach , 2001 . Most of these tools are summarized in MS EXCEL 's data analysis tool pack which can be accessed through the tools menu The different tools and their managerial applications are as follows

The tools for descriptive statistics are the summary statistics and the histogram . These two commands can display all the pertinent statistical data regarding a particular subject . For a manager , this could

give a bird 's eye view of how the business is doing in terms of sales investments , and human resources . This tool can give out the average performance of each of several groups of employees and could allow the manager to make an estimated guess of the average performance he could expect from his subordinates . The second tool is the random selection option . In case a manager would like to test only a certain number of employees or groups , then this feature comes in handy in selecting those items manually . This takes away an y biases inherent to the manager and ensures the reliability of selected data . The third too is the test for significant difference . In the MS EXCEL tool pack , there are several tests that can measure significant difference . Some like the three types of t-test can measure significant differences between two groups while others such as the ANOVA can measure differences among many different groups . To a manager , these tests allow not only a of performance but more importantly a proper gauge of how one people are performing with respect to one another . These tests can be used to check performance on an individual , team , or company scale . In essence , it can tell a manager whether person A is significantly more efficient in his job than person B

The next feature is with respect to creating charts . MS EXCEL through its chart wizard button allows users to create simple to elaborate charts of different types (Walkenbach , 2001 . To a manager , this is very useful especially when presenting reports to superiors . Moreover , a manager could also use the plot trend line feature of the chart wizard to see hidden trends in scatter plot data . These trends could provide a manager with much needed insight in different aspects of his work and the people he works with

Question 2

Legal and ethical issues that could arise if a particular survey was used to create a pro of a model employee are few but serious . One legal issue is if the company would begin to hire only those people fitting in the characteristics described by the data they processed then that would be violating federal laws against discriminatory hiring (Bagley Dauchy , 1997 . Even if statistics would show that employees of a particular race or gender does a better job than people of different races or gender , putting the results of such a survey in policy would...