Quantitative Analysis-Decision Making

Select any one of the following starter bullet point sections. Review the important themes within the sub questions of each bullet point. The sub questions are designed to get you thinking about some of the important issues. Your response should provide  a succinct synthesis of the key themes in a way that articulates a  clear point, position, or conclusion supported by research. 

• You are designing a direct marketing campaign for an online clothing  retailer. As part of your design, you quantify the expected response  rates by ethnic group. Your definition of the term “ethnicity” follows  that of the U.S. Census Bureau (e.g., Hispanic, Asian, African American,  etc.). You want to test your campaign using 1,000 randomly selected  households, but you want your sample to mimic the US population in terms  of the proportion of different ethnicities (e.g., if Hispanics  constitute about 12 percent of the US population, 12 percent of your  sample should be Hispanic).
  • Assess the appropriateness of using a simple random sample as the test’s sampling plan.
  • Evaluate other potential sampling plans, and describe why such other  sampling plans might be more or less appropriate than using a simple  random sample. Support your discussion with relevant examples, research,  and rationale.
• You are a manager working for an insurance company. Your job entails  processing individual claims filed by policyholders. In general, few  claims are expensive. Each quarter, you compile a report summarizing key  claim statistics, such as the number of claims submitted, the average  cost per claim, and the total cost of submitted claims. In the last  quarter’s report, you notice a large difference between the mean and the  median claim cost, the mean cost being much higher than the median  cost.
  • Draw a conclusion as to why you might be observing this difference in the data.
  • Evaluate whether this information might be useful for determining if the claims data is normally distributed.
  • If you conclude that the data is likely normally distributed,  explain why. If not, suggest another distribution that might best  describe the data. Explain why this distribution would be a more  accurate representation of the data.
  • Given the large difference between the two measures of central  tendency, which of the two measures would you rely on in describing the  average claim cost and why? Support your discussion with relevant  examples, research, and rationale.
• You are an inventory manager working for a large online retailer. As  with any retailer, inventory control is one of the critical success  factors for the organization. Having too little inventory risks the loss  of sales when your company is unable to fulfill an order. However, too  much inventory imposes unnecessary costs on the organization. Often, one  of the most important pieces of information that can be used to  determine how much inventory to have on hand is the rate at which demand  occurs for the product.
  • Determine what information you would need to construct a confidence interval for the demand that will occur during a month.
  • Analyze how the numbers of such a confidence interval might  influence the level of inventory that the organization chooses to carry.  Support your discussion with relevant examples, research, and  rationale.

The final paragraph (three or four  sentences) of your initial post should summarize the one or two key  points that you are making in your initial response.

Submission Details:

• Your posting should be the equivalent of 1 to 2 single-spaced pages (500–1000 words) in length. 100% original, no plagiarism.