Management Decision Making

Course Objectives

At the end of the course the student will have the ability to:

Understand and apply statistical techniques for management decision making.
Present statistical data and analysis to support business reports and information systems for effective decision making.
Apply techniques for improving operational efficiency and effectiveness

Course Content

Introduction
The use of quantitative techniques in business
Use of computers
Basic terminology

Presenting Management Information
Bar Charts
Pie Charts
Frequency distributions
Percentage and cumulative frequencies
Histograms
Frequency polygons
Ogives
Lorenz curves
Time-series graphs
Z charts
Scatter diagrams
General principles of graphical presentation

Management Statistics
Measures of averages
Calculating statistics for aggregated data
Index numbers

Probability and Probability Distributions
TerminologyProbability distributions
The Binomial distribution
The Normal distribution

Decision Making Under Uncertainty
The decision problem
The maximax criterion
The maximin criterion
The minimax regret criterion
Decision making using probability information
Risk
Decision trees

Market Research and Statistical Inference
Populations and samples
The Central Limit Theorem
Confidence Intervals
Interpreting confidence intervals
Hypothesis tests

Quality Control and Quality Management
The importance of quality
Techniques in quality management
Statistical process control
Control charts

Forecasting I: Moving Averages And Time Series
The need for forecasting
Trend projections
Time-series models

Forecasting II: Regression

The principles of simple linear regression
The correlation coefficient
Using the regression equation
Non-linear regression
Multiple regression
The forecasting process

Linear Programming
Formulating the problem
Graphical solution to the LP formulation
Sensitivity analysis
Computer solutions

Stock Control
The stock-control problem
The stock-control decision
The economic order quantity model
The reorder cycle

Project Management
Characteristics of a project
Network diagrams
Gantt charts
Project costs and crashing

Simulation
The principles of simulation
Developing the simulation model
Using the model

Financial Decision Making
Interest
Present value
Investment appraisal

Recommended Text:

Quantitative Methods for Decision Makers 3 rd Edition. Mik Wisniewski
Pearson. ISBN No:-0-273-64684-2