BUS306 - Quantitative Reasoning - Probability Theory

Your specific assignment for this week is to select a type of quantitative data to collect from your own life. Some examples of data to collect could be:

The number of people you see at your work place each half day.

The number of phone calls you get in each morning and in each afternoon.

Any other numeric type of data that are relevant to you and that typically vary between the earlier part of the day and the later part of the day.

Please divide the day into two parts: AM and PM and get the data on one of these items for each part.

In a brief paper, describe the data you are going to collect. Collect data starting today so you can have at least 20 observations (two for each day), preferably more. Provide a description of the item you collected, and a table with the data that you have collected until the date of your uploading of this Module's SLP report. [You will use this data table for next assignment]

(Aside from the above assignment, answer questions in a small paragraph): A famous economist, Franc Knight, coined a definition regarding the distinction between "risk" and "uncertainty": He defines risk as a situation where we know the possible outcome of a particular course of action and we also know the probabilities of different outcomes (think of an example). Uncertainty is defined as a situation where we don't know exactly all the possible outcomes of a particular course of action, not the probabilities of each outcome.

What do you think is the typical situation in the business world: risk or uncertainty?

Can you think of situations in the business world or other real life situations where you would need to estimate probabilities?