homework

Homework 3

This homework consists of three exercises. Please produce the graph visualization of the data for each exercise using either Excel or Tableau. Under each exercise, please copy and paste the screen shot of your graph visualizations. Then, as directed below, add your design justification and rational for each design feature.

Exercise 1:

Imagine that you work in the Financial Planning and Analysis department. It's your job to report how actual quarterly expenses during the previous year compared to the budget for each of the five departments that report to the Vice President (VP) of Operations. The VP is only interested in the degree to which actual expenses deviated from budget, not the actual dollar amount. Here's the raw information:

	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Department	Budget	Actual	Budget	Actual	Budget	Actual	Budget	Actual
Distribution	390,000	375,000	395,000	382,000	400,000	390,000	410,000	408,000
Facilities	675,000	693,000	800,000	837,000	750,000	713,000	750,000	790,000
Human Resources	350,000	346,000	350,000	342,000	350,000	340,000	350,000	367,000
Information Systems	950,000	925,000	850,000	890,000	875,000	976,000	900,000	930,000

Create one or more graphs to display this information and copy paste below. Once you’ve completed your graph, take a few minutes to describe its design, including your rationale for each design feature, in the space below.

Exercise 2:

You are the company's marketing analyst. You have discovered through an analysis of last year's revenues that sales have significantly benefited from the use of television ads. You need to present this benefit to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Here's the raw information:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
TV Spots	20	25	20	30	30	30	30	20	15	25	30	35
Revenue	50,000	55,000	52,000	57,000	58,000	59,000	57,000	50,000	45,000	55,000	63,000	78,000

Create one or more graphs to display this information and copy paste below. Once you’ve completed your graph, take a few minutes to describe its design, including your rationale for each design feature, in the space below.

Exercise 3:

For this last exercise, you are a Sales Analyst. Based on analysis of sales revenues for the past four years, you've noticed that there is a clear cyclical trend. The highest revenues are always generated during the last month of each quarter and the last quarter of each year. without exception. You want to use this information to point out the need for distributing sales activity more evenly across the year so that sales operations are not hit with such spikes in activity at quarter ends, especially at year ends. The following table contains the data, in U.S. dollars:

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2008	50,000	52,000	55,000	51,000	52,000	55,000	48,000	49,000	50,000	53,000	56,000	62,000
2009	54,000	56,000	57,000	53,000	53,000	57,000	53,000	55,000	59,000	60,000	65,000	71,000
2010	61,000	60,000	65,000	62,000	64,000	68,000	59,000	60,000	65,000	67,000	70,000	75,000
2011	60,000	61,000	68,000	63,000	63,000	67,000	60,000	61,000	67,000	66,000	68,000	74,000

Create one or more graphs to display this information and copy paste below. Once you’ve completed your graph, take a few minutes to describe its design, including your rationale for each design feature, in the space below.