Question

you will work on a business problem. To get you started, Think of a business problem and describe it here. Find one question that you think you could research about it, and then find one variable with an accompanying descriptive statistic that could help you answer your question. For example, I am a partner in an elevator consultancy. I want to know which type of projects are most profitable. My question is, Which type of project is most profitable? I would use the variables project profit and project type. I would then find the average project profit for each project type. The highest average is my most profitable project type. Work through this for a problem in your career/workplace/lifestyle and share with the class.

Answer 1

I am describing here the problem that a Finance Controller faces. Question - to find out which department has performed the best in controlling costs and which department hasn't Before the beginning of a new finacial year, the Finance Controller along with his team sets up budgets for all the departments. It is not done independently. Inputs from the respective departments are taken as well. After all the discussions, amounts for each department are finalized under various heads like Salary cost, depreciation, travel costs, miscellaneous costs etc. After doing this activity, when the actual expenses are incurred in the financial year, the same must be compared with what was budgeted. The variables used would be Budgeted amount of each department and the relevant actuals against these budgets under respective cost headers. A comparison would then be made and differences would be calculated in both absolute terms and percentage terms. After making the comaprisons, the expenses that have exceeded the budget would be enquired and dealt with.