Simulation Paper

Week 3 Simulation

Harold Petzing

RES342

January 18, 2011

Dr. Cecilia Williams

Week 3 Simulation

This online, interactive training tool was much more difficult than I anticipated. I ended up getting a lot of things wrong, but I went over them and tried to learn from my mistakes.

Through the online training I learned several important lessons about implementing and choosing which statistical test to run. Initially when I was asked to choose between an ANOVA test and the Kruskal-Wallis test, I chose the ANOVA. I learned that it was not optimal for me to use ANOVA because I didn’t make sure that all the three major assumptions of ANONA were met (that being: the errors are random and independent of each other, that each population has a normal distribution, and that all the populations have the same variance).

The second lesson I learned was how to apply the knowledge gained from the statistical tests. Initially, I was unsure how to interpret the results from both the ANOVA (the non-optimal test) and the Kruskal-Wallis test. After reading through the material, it became a little clearer how to make a business decision based off of the data that was provided using the tests. I initially decided to only review the skill requirement for each of the projects not thinking that it would be necessary to account for scope changes at the planning stage. I was incorrect in that assumption as changes in the scope of the project also had a profound impact on project success and delays.

Finally, going along with implementation of the data, I learned that it is difficult to assess the correct suggestions off of the data. I ended up suggesting more changes than needed to be implemented (namely that there be a review of the communications between client and company).

Overall, after I completed the exercise, I felt like I knew a lot less information than I thought I initially did. But after doing the exercise a few times it helped me to understand the significance of each...