Monash University Handbook 2010 Undergraduate - Unit

Synopsis

Introduction to principles and techniques for modelling business and economic data.
Modelling in business and finance using computers -- spreadsheet modelling of business problems, organising and accessing data efficiently. Modelling in economics and finance -- multiple regression as a tool for modelling macroeconomic and microeconomic decisions, elasticities and statistical evaluation of policy, time series modelling with application to finance. Introduction to actuarial studies as an approach to building quantitative models of risk.

Objectives

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

• apply principles and techniques of data management with computers and spreadsheet modelling to business and economic decision-making problems, including profit models, breakeven analysis, sensitivity analysis, simulation, optimisation under uncertainty and network models
• interpret and evaluate relationships between variables for business and economic decision-making using multiple linear regression, including dummy variables, functional form, trends and seasonality in time series as well as inference, confidence intervals and prediction
• apply statistical techniques for making decisions with quantitative and categorical data in business and economics, including testing hypotheses about population mean(s), population proportion(s), one- and two-way analysis of variance, and difference between proportions in contingency tables.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 30%
Examination (2 hours): 70%

Chief examiner(s)

Phillip Edwards

Contact hours

Two 1-hour lectures and one 2-hour tutorial per week

Prerequisites

ETW1000

Prohibitions

ETC1010, ETC9010, ETW1031, ETW2111, ETW2010