Current Date From: Your Name To: InstructorSalutation InstructorLastName (e.g. Dr. Sherman) Subj: Name of your issue analysis (edit this title) 1. Identify the issue. In this paragraph, summarize the analysis project. In other words, identify the issue under investigation so that the reviewer knows what this analysis is about. This could be a problem or an opportunity. Include your research question and statistical question. 2. Analyze the issue. In this paragraph, briefly describe: a. where the data came from b. the steps you took to prepare the data for analysis c. descriptive statistics table d. how you analyzed the data e. the results of your analysis i. you should have a table that summarizes the results of your analysis ii. you should have some type of graphic (box plot, scatter graph, etc.) that illustrates your findings 3. Discussion. In this paragraph, in clear language, what did you find in your analysis, and what are the implications of your findings (interpret parameters, discuss statistically significant findings, etc.) 4. Courses of Action. In this section, develop three courses of action (things your company could do to address the issue). Briefly discuss each course of action, and how it would address the issue by summarizing your courses of action below: a. Course of Action 1 – blah, blah, blah. b. Course of Action 2 – blah, blah, blah. c. Course of Action 3 – blah, blah, blah, and blah. 5. Evaluation of Courses of Action: (1 = Least impact, 10 = Most impact) COA 1 2 3 Short title Cost (25%) Time (25%) Quality (50%) COA Score 6. Recommendation. In this paragraph, identify and defend your recommendation. Briefly discuss the implementation of your recommendation. Notes: Remove this note before submitting your assignment. (This line and everything below). • • • Make sure all tables, charts, and figures have captions. Make sure you reference any table, chart, or figure in your text, using the caption number and title. Label the axis, use title on figures and chart, etc. Spell check your memo, grammar check your memo, proofread your memo. WorkerID QuotaPlus YWC 21112 9 24437 4 23096 10 28360 12 22162 16 20224 7 22610 8 28663 9 25136 12 25701 4 27022 10 23164 6 29835 10 28740 9 29849 4 20163 15 29705 5 22786 10 29491 9 22403 7 24842 10 24671 9 21213 12 21894 14 21364 12 21741 7 24136 5 29563 11 27384 4 23092 9 25211 4 23801 4 23535 5 23406 6 26936 8 24401 6 25173 9 21550 4 23028 12 23854 9 21668 4 25944 12 25760 4 25409 11 28198 5 27547 4 12 4 19 2 16 6 7 11 11 15 17 12 2 13 17 7 5 3 11 7 20 20 14 13 8 14 8 9 5 20 14 16 3 8 12 13 5 16 1 14 11 11 20 2 8 2 Salary Training 44500 29000 58400 25800 53000 33700 35600 42600 43300 50200 54500 44700 26000 47900 55800 34100 30900 26700 44000 34100 60700 61100 49700 46400 37900 48900 37500 39500 30100 61000 49100 54000 26800 37200 44800 47200 30600 53100 22600 49600 43400 42600 60600 25700 37700 24900 8 8 10 11 14 9 10 10 11 8 10 8 11 10 8 14 9 9 8 10 9 8 9 12 11 8 7 9 8 10 7 9 9 9 9 9 8 7 10 10 8 11 9 9 7 7 EquipAge 8 10 9 7 4 9 9 8 9 11 10 9 9 10 11 5 12 8 9 10 10 9 8 6 9 9 12 10 12 10 12 12 10 9 10 11 8 12 8 10 12 7 12 10 10 11 EquipType FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC EA GLS ZZT 03 FLTWD MC 29166 29932 24656 21961 6 10 5 11 1 3 18 16 23900 26300 56400 52300 8 9 9 10 11 8 11 8 EA GLS ZZT 03 EA GLS ZZT 03 Using Weighted Evaluation Matrixes to Evaluate Courses of Action In this paper, I will discuss how to use an evaluation matrix to score various Courses of Action (COA’s) and use weighted evaluation criteria. You will have to play with this concept to understand it, apply it to some simple problems in your life where you must decide, and you have multiple options to consider. Table 1 below is the blank evaluation matrix from DAX6. Evaluation of Courses of Action: (1 = Least impact, 10 = Most impact) Table 1. Blank COA Evaluation Table from DAX6 COA 1 2 3 Short title Cost (25%) Time (25%) Quality (50%) COA Score We will fill in the matrix using interval data. We cannot use categorical or ordinal data because we can not add or multiply them, and if we use ratio data, we may have vastly different magnitudes in the variables we need to consider in making our decision. Remember we discussed the various types of data in one of our early Data Analytics Labs. Four types of data: Categorical, ordinal, interval, and ratio – we need to use interval or ratio data for the evaluation matrix. Weighting comes from the decision maker (their priorities, company vision & strategy, etc.) Simple example: Selecting a restaurant for dinner tonight. Options 1. Burger Fly: Joy-Joy Meal is $7.95, I can get it right away, but the food is not healthy or that tasty. The restaurant is five minutes away, and the food is ready in two minutes. 2. Mom’s Diner (a meat and three): Dinner and drink is $13.99 ($2.00 tip) = $15.99, food is very good and healthy. Service is good, and I can get seated right away. The restaurant is five minutes away, but all food is prepared fresh, so can take 20 minutes, but you have bread and a salad while you are waiting with five minutes of arriving. 3. Fancy Nancy’s Haute Cuisine: Dinner is $40 ($8.00 tip) = $48.00, portions are small, but very tasty, and it has an elegant atmosphere. The restaurant is 20 minutes away and there is usually at least a 20-minute wait for a table. The food is freshly prepared and can take 20 minutes before it is served, but an appetizer and a drink are made available within five minutes of sitting down. For this example, the lower the cost the better, I would fill the matrix for cost (just using raw scores not weighted scores): a. Add up all the ratio data on price ($7.95, $15.99, and $48.00 equals $71.94). b. Divide the total by the options value and round off to one significant digit ($71.94/$7.95 = 9.1; $71.94/$15.99 = 4.5; and $71.94/$48 = 1.5). c. Normalize the values by making the highest score equal to a 10 and apply the same transformation to the other values and round off one significant digit: (9.1 * 10 /9.1 = 10; 4.5 * 10 /9.1 = 5; 1.5 * 10/9.1 = 1.7). d. Now add those scores to the evaluation matrix (see Table 2 below). Dr. Jeff Bohler – Fall 2018 1 Using Weighted Evaluation Matrixes to Evaluate Courses of Action Table 2. Evaluation Matrix with Cost Data Added COA Short title 1 Burger Fly 2 Mom’s Diner 3 Fancy Nancy’s Cost 10 5 1.7 Time Quality COA Score Next, we consider the time aspect of our evaluation of courses of action. Since we are hungry now, the sooner we eat, the better, so shorter time is better (again, just the raw scores, we will weight the scores in a moment). a. Add up all the ratio data on time (7 minutes, 10 minutes, and 45 minutes is approximately 62 minutes (remember to be consistent with units of measurements). b. Divide the total by the options value and round off to one significant digit (62 min/7 min = 8.9; 62 min/10 min = 6.2; and 62 min/45 min = 1.4). c. Again, normalize the score so that the highest score is a 10 and round off to one significant digit (8.9 * 10/8.9 = 10; 6.2 *10/8.9 = 7; 1.8 * 10/8.9 = 1.5). d. Now add those scores to the evaluation matrix (see Table 3 below). Table 3. Evaluation Matrix with Cost and Time evaluation scores added. COA Short title 1 Burger Fly 2 Mom’s Diner 3 Fancy Nancy’s Cost 10 5 1.7 Time 10 7 1.5 Quality COA Score Now, it gets tricky. Thus far we have used objective criteria (cost and time) to develop our evaluation scores. Quality can be more subjective and differs based on perspective. While we could use an expert’s rating (local paper, Michelin score, etc.), but instead, since we have tried all three establishments, lets use our own assessment of the quality of the food. On a scale of one star is bad to five-star, best food ever, Burger Fly food quality gets one star. Mom’s gets a four-star rating, and Fancy Nancy’s is a five-star eatery. However, we have a problem. In the other two factors that we are using for this evaluation of courses of action, lower values were better (lower cost is good, shorter time is good). But with quality, the higher score is better (Five-star food is better than one-star food). So, we need to reverse the scale. Burger Fly gets a five, Mom’s a two, and Fancy Nancy’s a one). a. Add up all the subjective, and qualitative data on food quality that we have done our best to assess on an interval scale (5 stars, 2 stars, and 1 star equals 8 stars (remember to be consistent with units of measurements as much as possible). b. Divide the total by the assessments of quality value and round off to one significant digit (8 stars/5 stars = 1.6; 8 stars/2 stars = 4; and 8 stars/1 star = 8 stars). c. Again, normalize the score so that the highest score is a 10 and round off to a whole number (1.6 * 10/8 = 2; 4 *10/8 = 5; 8 * 10/8 = 10). d. Now add those scores to the evaluation matrix (see Table 4 on the next page). Dr. Jeff Bohler – Fall 2018 2 Using Weighted Evaluation Matrixes to Evaluate Courses of Action Table 4. Evaluation Matrix with Quality Scores added COA Short title 1 Burger Fly 2 Mom’s Diner 3 Fancy Nancy’s Cost 10 5 1.7 Time 10 7 1.5 Quality 2 5 10 COA Score Time 10 7 1.5 Quality 2 5 10 COA Score 22 17 13.2 Now, we add up the raw (unweighted) scores. Table 5. Evaluation Matrix with raw scores added COA Short title 1 Burger Fly 2 Mom’s Diner 3 Fancy Nancy’s Cost 10 5 1.7 Based on the raw score, where the higher score would indicate the better alternative, we can see from Table 5 that Course of Action (COA) 1 – Burger Fly is the best alternative. However, the decision maker (me) indicated that the quality of the food was twice as important as the other evaluation criteria, so we need to use a weighted matrix. These values are added in parentheses in Table 6 below. Table 6. Weighted Evaluation Matrix COA Short title 1 Burger Fly 2 Mom’s Diner 3 Fancy Nancy’s Cost (25%) 10 (2.5) 5 (1.25) 1.7 (0.4) Time (25%) 10 (2.5) 7 (3.5) 1.5 (0.4) Quality (50%) 2 (1) 5 (2.5) 10 (5) COA Score (Weighted Score) 22 (6) 17 (7.25) 13.2 (5.8) Interestingly, now that we have weighted the scores as indicated in Table 6, and the Quality factor is twice as important, COA 2 is appears to be the better alternative. The highest quality alternative COA3 also had higher cost and took longer to obtain, hurting COA 3’s weighted evaluation score. So, based on this evaluation, I would recommend COA 2 – Mom’s Diner. Obviously, this is a simple example to illustrate the concept. I would not recommend using this process for trying to determine where to eat, but you could. The power of this process is when you have many criteria among similar alternatives (vendors, service providers, expensive systems, etc.). Also, going through the process can help you ask important questions about the alternatives. Try it on some issue you might encounter in your life for fun to see how the process works. Finally, remember the adage, garbage in => garbage out. If you are dishonest with the qualitative/subjective assessments to determine values you use for the evaluation (garbage in), your results will not be useful (garbage out). In other words, you can cheat and make the option you want to win have the best score. However, if you use this process and think critically about your inputs and evaluation attributes, it can help you make better recommendation about complex issues. Dr. Jeff Bohler – Fall 2018 3 
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