MAS1403: Quantitative Methods for Business Management
Semesters 1 and 2, 2009-2010
Lecturers: Dr. Lee Fawcett (Semester 1) and Dr. Andy Golightly (Semester 2)
MAS1403 students should "favourite" this page!
This page contains additional information about the introductory module in Quantitative Methods for Business
Management (MAS1403). Here you will find resources for Semester 1 of this course - please go to Andy Golightly's page for Semester 2 materials.
Schedule of lectures and tutorials
Lectures take place on Mondays at 11 o'clock (Business Management, Agri-Business Management, Marketing) or 3 o'clock (Marketing and Management, Acountancy & Finance and Business Accountancy & Finance) in the Curtis Auditorium in the Herschel Building.
In addition to the Monday lecture, each student should also attend one tutorial session later on in the week. Due to the size of this class, there are seven tutorial groups (A, B, C, D, E, F and G). The allocation of students to tutorial groups is listed here - please make a note of which group you are in!
The table below shows the times and venues of each tutorial session.
=====================================================
Group Day Time Room
=====================================================
A Wed 9-10 Herschel LT2
B Wed 12-1 Herschel LT2
C Thurs 1-2 Herschel LT2
D Thurs 2-3 Cassie 2.32
E Thurs 3-4 Agriculture CS LT
F Fri 9-10 Stephenson F13
G Fri 11-12 Bedson LT1
====================================================
Occasionally throughout the year, a computer practical session will take the place of the scheduled tutorial session. In Semester 1, this will happen in teaching weeks 2 and 7; every computing session will take place in the Brig, Moss and Pond PC clusters in the Herschel Building (first floor).
The table below shows the times, dates and venues of these sessions.
=======================================================
Group Day Time Dates
=======================================================
A Wed 9-10 7 October, 11 November
B Tues 1-2 6 October, 10 November
C Thurs 1-2 8 October, 12 November
D Thurs 2-3 8 October, 12 November
E Thurs 3-4 8 October, 12 November
F Fri 9-10 9 October, 13 November
G Fri 9-10 9 October, 13 November
=======================================================
In addition to the scheduled lecture and tutorials/practicals, I have also timetabled an "Office hour" - Wednesday 1pm-3pm - where I will always be available in my office for students who need extra help.
Click here to download a week-by-week schedule for Semester 1, including deadlines for coursework.
Lecture notes
Lecture notes will be posted below, together with solutions to
tutorial exercises. They are in pdf format and you will need Acrobat
Reader to view them - click on the link to download your own (free)
copy.
You should print out and read lecture notes before each lecture
and attempt tutorial questions before each tutorial session -
solutions will be posted after the final tutorial session each
week. The notes and solutions currently available are shown in red
below.
An attendance register will be taken at each tutorial. Please note
that a good attendence record will be taken into account when deciding
whether to pass students with borderline assignment/exam marks.
- Chapter 1 (28/09/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions,
crap questionnaire for prize question - winner: TBA
- Chapter 2 (05/10/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 3 (12/10/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 4 (19/10/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions, prize question winner: TBA
- Chapter 5 (26/10/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 6 (02/11/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 7 (09/11/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions,
Minitab practical sheet,
Farmer's Market Data,
Jeans Sales Data
- Chapter 8 (16/11/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 9 (23/11/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 10 (30/11/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions, prize question winners: TBA. Optional workshop on probability models - Wednesday, 2pm, Herschel LT1; solutions can be found here
- Week 11 (07/12/09): No lecture notes needed - a handout (and Christmas prizes!) will be given out in the lecture.
- Week 12 (05/01/09): No lecture notes needed - the Semester 1 Revision Booklet will be given out in the lecture.
Semester 2
- Chapter 1 (26/01/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 2 (02/02/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 3 (09/02/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 4 (16/02/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions, prize question winner: Chun Yue Siu, solution
- Chapter 5 (23/02/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 6 (02/03/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions, prize question winner: Moshin Khan.
- Chapter 7 (09/03/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
Minitab practical sheet. Optional workshop on hypothesis testing - Wednesday, 2pm, Herschel LT3
- Chapter 8 (16/03/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 9 (20/04/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Chapter 10 (27/04/09): lecture
notes,
slides,
tutorial solutions
- Week 11 (04/05/09): No lecture notes needed - the Semester 2 Revision Booklet will be given out in the lecture. Note that Monday is a bank holiday so the lecture will take place in the tutorial slots! These slides give some of the solutions.
- Week 12 (11/05/09): Please download last year's exam paper before the lecture; here are some brief solutions.
Click here to see the list of prize winners and what they won!
Please report to me any
errors or suggested improvements to these notes.
Assessment
The assessment of the module consists of a 2 hour examination at the end
of Semester 2 (60%), an assignment in each semester (10% each), and three computer-based assessments in each semester (combined total of 20%).
Exam (60%)
Obviously I can't show you this year's exam but you can get a copy of
previous exam papers from the university's exam site. Last year's exam paper is available here.
Please note that, before last year, the old code for MAS1403 was MAS187; the old code for ACE2013 was AEF258. If you're registered for ACE2013, I wouldn't use the AEF258 papers before 2005/06 - the course changed considerably that year.
The exam for MAS1403 will be open-book - you can take anything you like into the exam room! News! This year, the exam for ACE2013 will also be open-book!
For a list of exam regulations, including an up-to-date list of University-approved calculators (point 12), click here.
Assignments (20%)
There are two assignments, one in each semester. An announcement will be made in class when these are available to download. Please complete and attach this cover sheet to the front of your assignments.
Assignment 1 (deadline: 4pm, Wednesday 10th December 2008)
Assignment 2 (deadline: 4pm, Wednesday 22nd April 2009)
- Description
- Cyprus data for question 2
- There are three questions in assignment 2 - don't forget to look over the pages!
- The calculations in questions 1 and 3 in this assignment should be done by hand, and you should show all your working. You should use Minitab for question 2, and your solutions to question 2 should be word-processed.
Computer based assessments (CBAs) (20%)
There will be three computer based assessments in each semester. You will be given a tutorial on how to use the system in the practical sessions in week 2 of semester 1. Each assessment will be available in "practice mode" for you to practice as many times as you like. When you feel confident with the material in each CBA, you then sit the test "for real", in "exam mode".
Click here to download the one-page CBA user-guide given out in the first practical session. A more detailed CBA instruction manual is available to download here.
To find out how to access the CBAs from home, click here.
Accessing your assignment marks
To access your coursework marks for MAS1403/ACE2013, you need to log in to the NESS database system. All of your marks for this course are stored in this system, and maybe for other some other courses too.
To access NESS from a Newcastle University computer (or via RAS), go to https://ness.ncl.ac.uk:444/. Use your usual University login ID and password to enter the system. Your login information is retained until your browser session (all windows!) is closed. So to logout, you need to close the browser. Using the menus in NESS, go to Coursework, then Summary.
By default this will give you all your current Coursework information. To look at a single module, click on one of the module codes. To look at a single unit of coursework, set the pull-down menu to the relevant exercise, e.g. to Exercise 1, rather than the general heading Coursework. Assignments 1 and 2 are listed as "Exercise 1" and "Exercise 2" respectively.
Your coursework marks will appear here throughout the Semester as they are released by me.
Videos
Some short video footage of calculations relevant to various parts of this course will appear here shortly.
Semester 1
Chapter 1: How shops use data
Chapter 1: Data collection and questionnaires
Chapter 1: The Gallup organisation and market research
Chapter 2: Graphical summaries of data
Chapter 4: Means, medians, modes
Chapter 4: Standard deviation
Chapter 4: Standard deviation on the calculator
Chapter 4: Inter-quartile range
Chapter 8: The Binomial distribution
Chapter 8: The Poisson distribution
Chapter 9: The Normal distribution
Chapter 10: The Uniform distribution
Chapter 10: The Exponential distribution
Semester 2
Chapter 1: Confidence intervals (population variance known)
Chapter 1: Confidence intervals (population variance unknown)
Chapter 2: Test for one mean (population variance known)
Video out-takes
Some other stuff
Read about the trial of Janet and Malcolm Collins - "Trial by Mathematics" - here (Lecture 5 - misuse of the multiplication law of probability). Another account is given here, and an account from the time here.
If you're inrerested in why zero factorial (0!) is equal to 1 (as used in the Poisson distribution) take a look at the following links:
Lee Fawcett
Last modified: Tue Sep 22 15:42:32 BST 2009