“The Local” retail outlet have seconded your services to analyze and interpret data from their past year’s overall sales. “The Local” is an icon of outback Queensland providing quality goods through their delivery service and shop front, they pride themselves on no destination being too far or remote and bring quality brand name products to those who have no opportunity to visit the big name retail outlets of the cities and provincial towns. Eighty years of servitude and continuing.

Bianca Pascoe, Owner of “The Local,” wishes you to provide her with a statistical report through the appropriate assessment drop box on our subject website by 4 pm Friday 14th September 2018. The contract you have with her states that for each weekday or part thereof after Friday 14th September 2018. A deduction of 5% of the total assessment available will be removed from your assessed score. If you wish to be provided an extension on the deadline you must apply for such extension prior to the Friday 14th September 2018, and any such application must be accompanied by a Health Practitioner’s Certificate or a Statutory Declaration specifically stating the details of the reason for the required extension, (beware no details any extension).

Bianca Pascoe has provided the following statement as background and advice in terms of the recommendations you can provide to her organization…

The number of goods sold by “The Local” is in excess of one million per year with deliveries being about 40% of that figure. The amount of goods sold has decreased marginally in recent years. “The Local” is wholly owned but Bianca and her staff have a standard of living to maintain so there is some pressure to raise overall sales whilst keeping costs, particularly delivery costs, in check.

Bianca continues:

It is your job to use the sample data from last year’s overall sales to do some statistical analyses and interpretations, investigating what the current overall sales of the business are and providing insights that will guide future business decisions.

She specifically asks:

Can you put a statistical report commonly about the overall sales and deliveries of “The Local”?

Please use your knowledge of descriptive statistical concepts to explain and summarise the information you extract from the supplied data file.

I assume that you know that a good statistical report starts with summarising data and identifying the variables, the variable types, the valid values for each variable and ensuring that the quantitative variables within the data do not contain outliers.

She continues:

In your report, as a minimum, I would like you to…

1. Provide a table in which you review complete descriptive statistics on ‘Overall sales’ and ‘deliveries’ of the goods represented by your sample data set (including but NOT limited to measures of central location, measures of variability, etc.).

What insights do these statistics provide?

Additionally, please state the coefficient of variation for ‘sales’ and ‘deliveries’ for the entire dataset. Comment on the results you observe.

2. Prepare frequency distributions (remember to use Sturge’s rule and create the appropriate similarly sized classes) and accompanying histograms and ogives for these quantitative sets.

Think about and provide additional analyses/diagrams that may be of interest.

What insights do these statistics provide?

3. Analyse ‘Overall sales’ and ‘deliveries’ for any relationship, providing a scatter plot.

Comment on the existence of a relationship, how you came to that conclusion if a relationship exists further comment on its strength and, in any case, what this means in terms of managing the retail outlet.

4. Develop cross tabulation or contingency tables to provide information on:

• Overall sales and fat/sugar content, please only analyze those goods that have items that exhibit Regular and Low Fat/Sugar values.
• Item Type and deliveries.

Remember quantitative values must be presented as classes in cross tabulation or contingency tables.

Be Careful to explain any patterns or anomalies you find in your tables.

5. Prepare a pie chart to graphically represent the proportion of overall sales by each item type (create classes of overall sales for this purpose). Interpret the graph comment on any issues you perceive.
6. Remember this should be done in a report format; please seek assistance if you have any doubts as regards creation of such a report.

Thank you for agreeing to do this important review task for me, I look forward to improved overall sales through your insights.