EXCEL EXPERT ONLY

Individual Assignment: Signature Assignment

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is for students to synthesize the concepts learned throughout the course, provide students an opportunity to build critical thinking skills, develop businesses and organizations, and solve problems that require data.

Grading Guide

Content Met Partially

Met Not Met

Comments:

Student made a short presentation to CDS’s management for Case 1.

Using Microsoft® Excel® Pivot Tables, student constructed a

frequency distribution showing the number of times during the

month that the server was down for each downtime cause

category.

Developed a bar chart that displays the data from the

frequency distribution in part 1.

Developed a pie chart that breaks down the percentage of

total downtime that is attributed to each downtime cause

during the month.

Evaluated the mean, median, standard deviation, and

variance of the downtime minutes for the month of November.

For the purpose of Case 2, students used the concepts of percentages, percentage increase/decrease, and creating and interpreting line charts to compute the inflation rate in the US economy and determined which time period experienced the highest inflation rate.

For Case 2, student followed the steps below: 1. Search for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED).

2. On the home page of the website, you will see a search

box.

3. Type in CPI- AUCSL in the search box and press the

return key.

4. The first result of the search will be “Consumer Price

Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items.” Click on this

result link.

Signature Assignment Grading Guide QRB/501 Version 10

2

Content Met Partially

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Comments:

5. Click on the Download link and download the data in

Excel®.

6. On the Excel® file, the second column gives you the CPI

values for each period starting from 1947.

7. Go to the last row and notice the last date and the CPI

value. Go back 6 years from this last date. For example, if

the last date is 2016-11-01, then the date 6 years ago

would be 2010-11-01.

8. Copy and paste this six years data into a separate Excel®

tab.

9. Using Excel®, calculate the percentage change in CPI

from a year earlier for each observation, beginning with

the observation one year later than the first observation.

To make this calculation, click on the blank cell next to the

observation corresponding to that date and then enter the

following formula (note that in Excel®, the symbol for

multiplication is *):

where t-1 is the first observation and t is the observation one year later. For example, to find the percentage change in CPI from 2010-11-01 to 2010-10-01, you need to use the formula,

Convert this value to a percentage in Excel®. Repeat this process for the remaining observations (you can use the copy and paste functions to avoid having to retype the formula).

10. This new column contains the national inflation rate.

11. Create a line graph of the percentage changes (inflation

rates) from a year earlier.

12. Which period experienced the highest inflation rate? What was the inflation rate during that period?

Total

Available Total

Earned

Signature Assignment Grading Guide QRB/501 Version 10

3

Content Met Partially

Met Not Met

Comments:

4 #/4

Writing Guidelines Met Partially

Met Not Met

Comments:

Organization

The tone is appropriate to the content and assignment.

The introduction provides a sufficient background on the topic and previews major points.

Paragraph transitions are present, logical, and maintain the flow throughout the paper.

The conclusion is logical, flows from the body of the paper, and reviews the major points.

Mechanics

The assignment—including tables and graphs, headings, title page, and reference page—is consistent with APA formatting guidelines and meets course-level requirements.

Intellectual property is recognized with in-text citations and a reference page.

Sentences are complete, clear, and concise.

Rules of grammar and usage are followed including spelling and punctuation.

Total

Available Total

Earned

2 #/2

Assignment Total # 6 #6

Additional comments: