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Quantitative Analysis For Business Module 3

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27 views5 pages

Quantitative Analysis For Business Module 3

Uploaded by

abel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1.

0 TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION AND BASIC STATISTICS

Basic concepts of statistics


Statistics is a collection of methods for collecting, displaying, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from
data.

Statistical method
This can be described as :
• The selection, collection and organization of basic facts into meaningful data, and then
• The summarizing, presentation and analysis of data into useful information.
The term ‘Statistics’ starting with a capital letter ‘S’ refers to Statistics as a field of study,
while ‘statistics’ starting with small letter ‘s’ refers to the numeric measures that
describes the specific characteristic of a sample.
The following are two main branches of statistics:

Descriptive statistics focus on tabular, graphical and numerical procedures that are
used to summarize and process data, whose purpose is to describe the situation
•
Inferential statistics focus on using the data to make predictions, forecasts, and
estimates to make better decisions.

Data and information


Data is a term used to mean raw facts, which one can use to produce information,
which can address a question or explain a situation. Information is processed data that
is meaningful to the user. Processing of data can be any of the following.
• Classification
• Computation
• Sorting
• Categorisation

Classification of data
• Data can be classified into many groups.
• The bases include nature of measurement and source.
• If nature of measurement is considered, data can be classified as discrete, continuous,
qualitative or quantitative, while if the source of data is taken into account, terms
like primary or secondary data can be used.
• It should be noted that some of these classifications are not mutually exclusive, they
do overlap.
• For example, quantitative data can be secondary or primary.

Sources of Data
Data sources can be classified as primary or secondary, giving rise to primary data or
secondary data respectively.

Primary data
•
Primary data means original data that have been collected specially for the purpose in
mind. Primary data can also be defined as data collected from an original source.
•
It means when an authorized organization, an investigator or an enumerator collects the
data for a specific purpose and from an original source himself or with the help of an
institution or an expert then the data thus collected are called primary data.
•
Usually primary data is collected through surveys, interviews, observations
or participation. Various tools for data collection (questionnaires, schedules or
even checklists) exist.
Research where one gathers this kind of data is referred to as field research
Secondary Data
•
Secondary data are data that have been collected for another purpose. Examples of
Secondary data include data from magazine, newspapers, books, or any publication.
Research where one gathers this kind of data is referred to as desk research

Types of Data
There are different types of data depending on the nature of the data or how the data
have been measured and gathered.

Quantitative and Qualitative


Quantitative data are numerical measurements expressed in terms of numbers and the
numbers stand for specific values. They are not mere labels.
Example
•
Balance at a bank $4344.2
•
Number of students in a class 75
•
Height of a person 1.3m

Quantitative data can be Discrete and continuous. Discrete data is data relating to
“countable variables.” The data is mainly in the form of integers. Examples: 2 cars,
5 people, 272 tablets of soap.

Continuous data is data, which is part of a range. The user simply decides on a limit.
Items whose data is normally continuous include Age, Time, Length, Height, Weight.
Continuous data is characterized by the presence of fractions in its measurement,
although some will be expressed as whole numbers for example:
•
The age of a child: 5.7 years
•
The distance between towns: 80 km
•
A bag of maize 50 kg

Qualitative data comprises labels, opinions or expressions of conclusions. As opposed


to quantitative data which is in numeric form, qualitative data is expressed by means of
a natural language descriptions. Sometimes qualitative data is referred to as
"categorical" data.

Example
!

Today’s weather: “bad”


!

Level of attendance: “high”


!

Comment on Project: “successful”


!

Expressions of size: “small, medium and large”


!

Sociologist conclusion: “poverty fuels spread of HIV” Note that use of numbers in data d
oes not necessarily make that data quantitative forexample:
!

The number at the back of a football player: 11


!

Scores representing opinions: 1 (poor), 5 (Excellent)


!

Storm category 5 (bad) The numbers above are only labels (much as some can be
described as some form of ranking). These numbers can be changed without changing
the meaning or what it represents.

Hard and soft data


Hard data are facts, measurements or characteristics arising from situations that
actually exist or were in existence. Examples of hard data are:
!

Daily sales of a vegetable vendor


!

Temperatures recorded at a weather station


!

Parties of presidential candidates


!

Nationalities of victims of an air crash

Soft data are about beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Asking shoppers for their opinion
about quality of service or effectiveness of an advertising medium will give rise to soft
data.
1.4.3

Cross-section data and time series data


Cross-section data are data collected at the same point in time or based on the same
period of time whereas time series data are observations made on a variable at regular
intervals over time. The SADC foreign direct investment in 2019 shows cross-section
data whereas the annual foreign direct investment in Zimbabwe for the years 1980 to
2019 constitutes a time series.
1.5

Data Measurement Levels / Scales


Data can also be identified by their level of measurement. This is important because the
higher the data level, the more sophisticated the analysis that can be performed
Basically we have four measurement scales which are the nominal scale, the ordinal
scale, the interval scale and the ratio scale giving rise to nominal data, ordinal data,
interval data and ratio data respectively. We have deliberately listed the scales in this
particular order from the lowest to the highest level of data measurement.

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