1. A new program is developed to increase the overall number of runs for Major League Baseball teams by an outside sporting company, Run Boys Run. In 2015, the average number of runs scored for the entire season by a sample of 25 teams is 690.24. The population standard deviation is 58.36.

1. Find the standard error.

2. Identify the upper and lower z score for a 95% confidence interval for µ.

3. Calculate the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval.

1. The weights of baby boys at six months is normally distributed with a mean of 17.25 lbs. and a standard deviation of 2.0 lbs. By an age of twelve months, the mean increases to 22.50 lbs. and the standard deviation is 2.2 lbs.
   1. Which age group has the wider distribution?
      1. When baby turn 1 year old has the wider dist.
   2. What percentage of the twelve-month old boys weigh more than 26.9 lbs.?
   3. What percentage of six-month old boys weigh between 15.25 lbs. and 19.25 lbs.?
   4. A twelve-month old boy who weighs 24.7 lbs. is what percentile for weight?

What are the economic and social benefits of educating girls?

Describe some of the political and social trade-offs that might occur when a less developed country adopts a strategy to promote labor force participation and economic growth via investment in girls’ education.

2. Needs Assessment for Coastal Tool Rental

Kathleen Marsh is a recent community college graduate who plans to open an equipment and tool rental store in the next few months. The store will target do-it-yourselfers who need gardening and home improvement implements that may be too expensive to purchase for a limited project.

Although this is her first real venture as an entrepreneur, Kathleen worked in a tool rental shop during high school and college. Kathleen’s store, Coastal Tool Rental, will be in a new shopping center. Kathleen chose the location because a sizable community of family homes is nearby and because no major competition is located in the area, which is about 15 miles from the nearest large town. She has arranged to rent 2500 square feet of space in the shopping center. She has located a wholesaler who can provide her with a start-up inventory of common garden and home improvement implements. The wholesaler can also serve as a supplier for new and replacement tools, equipment, and consumables.

Kathleen majored in small business management, but she also took a number of computer- related courses as electives—including some classes on programming and on using word processing, spreadsheet, and database applications. Kathleen plans to purchase a desktop computer for use in her small business venture, but her start-up money and time are limited.

Kathleen is considering the following four options to keep track of equipment rentals:

1. A manual system of file cards for each piece of equipment and each customer

2. A computer-based system she would build using a spreadsheet or database application

3. A computer-based option she would program herself

4. An off-the-shelf software package designed for equipment renta

She has asked for your help to determine the feasibility of each of these options. Complete the following:

# First, prepare a list of interview questions for Kathleen that would help you make a recommendation to her.

# After you have a list of potential questions to ask in an interview, compare your questions with those of three classmates or coworkers. Work with your group to create one merged list of questions for Kathleen. Organize the questions under several main categories.

# When you have completed the list of interview questions, your instructor will provide you with Kathleen’s responses to several questions from an interview with her. Based on her responses, complete the following:

Briefly describe the pros and cons of the four options Kathleen is considering.

Based on what you know of Kathleen’s situation, which of the four options would you recommend to her? Explain your reasoning.

In order to implement one of these options, Coastal Tools Rental would need data on each rental item and each customer. List the fields you think Coastal would need to include in either a record for each rental tool or a record for each customer.

Two towns, each with three members, are deciding whether to put on a fireworks display to celebrate the New Year. Fireworks cost $360. In each town, some people enjoy fireworks more than others.

In the town of Bayport, each of the residents values the public good as follows:

The total benefit of the fireworks display to the town of Bayport is _________

.

Therefore, fireworks ______ pass the cost-benefit analysis in the town of Bayport.

The mayor of Bayport proposes to decide by majority rule and, if the fireworks referendum passes, to split the cost equally among all residents.

Who would vote in favor of the fireworks referendum? Check all that apply.

Tim

Alyssa

Brian

The vote ____________ yield the same answer as the cost-benefit analysis.

In the town of River Heights, each of the residents values the public good as follows:

The total benefit of the fireworks display to the town of River Heights is ________

.

Therefore, fireworks ____________ pass the cost-benefit analysis in the town of River Heights.

The mayor of River Heights also proposes to decide by majority rule and, if the fireworks referendum passes, to split the cost equally among all residents.

Who would vote in favor of the fireworks referendum? Check all that apply.

Crystal

Edison

Hilary

The vote _______ yield the same answer as the cost-benefit analysis.

Which of the following statements is correct about the provision of public goods? Check all that apply.

a. Majority rule is the most efficient way to determine the amount of public goods a society should produce.

b. It is hard for the government to decide the appropriate amount of public goods to produce because people have differing preferences regarding such goods.

c. The government always provides the exact types of public goods that everyone in the society wants.

The authors of the paper "Age and Violent Content Labels Make Video Games Forbidden Fruits for Youth" carried out an experiment to determine if restrictive labels on video games actually increased the attractiveness of the game for young game players.†Participants read a description of a new video game and were asked how much they wanted to play the game. The description also included an age rating. Some participants read the description with an age restrictive label of 7+, indicating that the game was not appropriate for children under the age of 7. Others read the same description, but with an age restrictive label of 12+, 16+, or 18+.

The data below for 12- to 13-year-old boys are fictitious, but are consistent with summary statistics given in the paper. (The sample sizes in the actual experiment were larger.) For purposes of this exercise, you can assume that the boys were assigned at random to one of the four age label treatments (7+, 12+, 16+, and 18+). Data shown are the boys' ratings of how much they wanted to play the game on a scale of 1 to 10.

Do the data provide convincing evidence that the mean rating associated with the game description by 12- to 13-year-old boys is not the same for all four restrictive rating labels? Test the appropriate hypotheses using a significance level of 0.05.

Calculate the test statistic. (Round your answer to two decimal places.)

F =  

Please show work and explain. thank you

PROJECT SUMMARY

A multiprime contract for the construction of a new high school for the New State Building Commission

KEY PLAYERS

Concrete Services Corp. (CSP)

Concrete Contractors

CSP did not have much experience working on public projects, but it did have vast experience as a concrete subcontractor.

Steel Contractor Inc. (SCI)

Steel contractor responsible for supplying the steel columns and erecting the steel frame of the building

Corporal Construction and Management Services, Inc. (CCMS)

Management service responsible for creating and managing the schedule for the project, including:

• Reviewing and coordinating work schedules to eliminate any potential conflicts
• Visiting the job site regularly
• Communicating with the different trades throughout the duration of the project
• Conducting job site meetings to resolve any conflicts that do arise

CCMS is the project’s construction manager under the standard CM Agreement and General Conditions issued by the New State Building Commission. They are a relatively new company and did not have much experience in a construction management role.

Paul Manager

Assigned by CCMS as the lead project manager on the construction project

CCMS needed to quickly fill the lead construction management role on the project or face termination, so they hired Paul Manager. Paul was recommended to CCMS by the owner of SCI.

THE CHALLENGE

Throughout the project, CSP complained to Paul that SCI was hindering its work progress because SCI was experiencing delays in erecting the steel and often did not get the steel columns delivered in time. On a regular basis, the CSP crew would show up for work and would be forced to wait around because SCI had not completed its erection of the steel due to delays in the delivery of SCI’s materials.

When CSP brought the situation to Paul Manager’s attention, Paul told CSP not to worry about it and that he was confident that SCI would come through and complete its scope of work in a timely manner. Paul Manager never conducted a job site meeting to address the situation and he never documented any of CSP’s concerns. On one occasion, CSP’s concrete pump was crushed by one of SCI’s cranes because Paul had arranged to have both crews on the job at the same time working in the same area.

The construction project’s completion date was delayed several months, in part due to an unusually rainy season, but also due in part to schedule delays experienced by several of the contractors on the project.

CSP filed a lawsuit in federal district court alleging that CCMS’s mismanagement of its oversight responsibilities caused CSP to experience a number of delays and to work inefficiently, resulting in extra costs. As evidence of CCMS’s mismanagement of the entire project, CSP alleged that:

• CCMS abandoned the critical path schedule, forcing contractors to do work out of sequence
• Access to the job site often prevented its crew from working at all
• The process for submitting and approving extra work orders took too long, and they often remained unresolved

Question

1. What management technique would you recommend to Paul to mitigate the risk of future disputes?

2. What documentation could either side provide to support their claim?

//C++

a. Add the following operation to the class orderedLinkedList:

void mergeLists(orderedLinkedList &list1, orderedLinkedList &list2);

//This function creates a new list by merging the //elements of list1 and list2.

//Postcondition: first points to the merged list

// list1 and list2 are empty Consider the following statements:

orderedLinkedList newList;

orderedLinkedList list1;

orderedLinkedList list2;

Suppose list1 points to the list with the elements 2 6 7, and list2 points to the list with the elements 3 5 8.

The statement: newList.mergeLists(list1, list2); creates a new linked list with the elements in the order 2 3 5 6 7 8, and the object newList points to this list. Also, after the preceding statement executes, list1 and list2 are empty.

b. Write the definition of the function template mergeLists to implement the operation mergeLists.

Case:

Delta's New Song:

A Case on Cost Estimation in the Airline Industry

INTRODUCTION

Founded in 1924, Delta Airlines is the third largest U.S. airline in operating revenues and revenue passenger miles flown. 1 Traditionally, Delta's primary competition came from the other full-service airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines. However, in recent years, the major airlines have increasingly been forced to compete with low-cost, no-frill airlines pioneered by "fly for peanuts" Southwest Airlines. The significant downturn in passenger volume in the third quarter of 2001 (following the September 11 attacks) served only to increase the head-to-head competition between the majors and the low-cost competitors.

AIRLINE LABOR COSTS

Industry Challenges

Airlines must operate within a low-margin, high-fixed-cost environment, making profitability particularly sensitive to decreases in volume, either from environmental factors (e.g., the September 11,2001 attacks) or from competition. Moreover, the airline business is labor-intensive. Labor costs as a percentage of revenues ranges from a low of about 25 percent for the low-fare airlines to almost 50 percent for the large, full-service airlines such as United (see Exhibit 1).

For many airlines labor unions at various levels of the organization are strong, presenting an additional challenge in the management of costs. Labor union (re)negotiations were on the rise during 2003, as airlines tried to pass along an increasing share of the cost cutting to its employees. In the summer of 2002, US Airways won concessions from its workers corresponding to a 27 percent reduction from its prior year labor costs. Plans to terminate the airline's pilot pension plan, however, met with objections and will likely be resolved in US Airway's bankruptcy hearings. In January of 2003, American Airlines requested an $8 billion concession from the three labor unions representing its labor force. Northwest similarly argued for salary concessions as part of a $ 1 billion cutback (Gary and McCartney 2003).

"Labor costs, especially pilot-labor costs, are on the point of the spear again," Capt John Prater, chairman of the pilot union at Continental Airlines, recently wrote to his members. "Airline managements, Wall Street, the [Bush] administration and Congress are once again looking for a scapegoat to blame for the industry's ailments; so-called 'high-priced, under-worked' pilots have once again become their primary target." A senior pilot in the industry typically earns about $250,000 a year, while a senior mechanic would make about $70,000 and a senior flight attendant about $40,000. (Gary and McCartney 2003)

Delta Airlines

With over 81,000 employees, salaries are a significant component of Delta's cost structure, accounting for over 42 percent of the company's total operating expenses and over 46 percent of total revenues in fiscal year 2002 (see Exhibit 2). As with other airlines, Delta pilots and flight attendants are paid for hours flown. Contracts for unionized personnel guarantee a certain level of hours to unionized employees (with federal regulations providing caps on the number of hours that can be flown by an individual in a month). As a consequence, salaries are largely fixed in the short term for unionized employees. However, Delta is the least unionized of the major airlines. In fact, Delta's pilots are the only unionized employee group (with the exception of a very small contingency of flight operations personnel). Delta's flight attendants and ticket agents are not under union contract; consequently, their salaries, as well as hourly personnel (e.g., ticket counter and ramp operations personnel), represent salaries that are more variable in nature. Moreover, contracted maintenance work creates additional flexibility in salaries costs for Delta.

Since interim wage concessions by pilots of United Airlines (which also filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002), Delta pilots are the highest paid in the industry with an average hourly wage rate for a Boeing 757 captain of $245. The same pilot would earn $178 per hour at Continental Airlines and only $172 per hour at United (post-concession) (Harris 2003b). In February 2003, the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) successfully blocked Delta's plan to furlough an additional 1,700 pilots (Delta had already furloughed 1,600 pilots citing September 11 traffic declines as "circumstances beyond its control"). The ALPA, however, argued that the furloughs were in fact the result of the general economic difficulties the industry was experiencing and, therefore, were in violation of ALPA contracts that prohibit layoffs due to the company's economic

and financial situation. Delta representatives continue to assert the "continuing need to address overall pilot costs to enable Delta to return to a competitive cost structure and to preserve Delta's long-term future" (Setaishi 2003).

DELTA'S SONG

In November 2002, Delta Airlines announced that it would form a new low-cost carrier, Song. Song began service on April 15, 2003 with its first flight between John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and West Palm Beach, Florida (Wong 2003). This was not Delta's first attempt to enter the low-fare market. A previous attempt, Delta Express, was initially profitable but eventually failed because of "a lack of a management team to fight budget wars, cost creep, and brand confusion" (Daniel 2003). Despite this prior unsuccessful attempt to operate a low-cost carrier under the Delta umbrella, Delta asserts its belief that Song will be able to successfully compete in the low-fare industry segment, a segment that has been relatively prosperous amid the industry downturn.

Song operations will be based on the low-cost model of Southwest Airlines (e.g., low fares, low frills, and quick turnarounds) and is targeted to compete with successful newcomer JetBlue. Song will be supported by a single-airliner fleet of 36 Boeing 757s and will provide service to Florida and the East Coast. Like JetBlue, Song flights will feature in-flight entertainment competitive with JetBlue's satellite televisions (Harris 2002).

Can Delta Succeed Where It Has Failed Before?

Overall, Delta expects cost per available seat mile to be about 20 percent lower for Song than it is for its current operations. John Selvaggio, Delta executive and future Song president indicates that airplane utilization will be increased and pilots and flight attendants will experience "more flying and less sitting time" (Harris 2002). What Delta won't do, however, is pay its Song pilots less than the current Delta pilots. Given that Delta pilots' per hour wage rates are, on average, $100 more than those of Southwest and JetBlue, industry analysts are skeptical of the ability of Delta to compete in the low-cost carrier segment. "It's very hard for me to see how they can come very close to the costs of JetBlue and Southwest without closing the labor-cost gaps," said Michael Roach, an associate with Unisys R2A Transportation Management Consultants in Hayward, California (Harris 2003a). In fact, Roach estimates that JetBlue and Southwest would still have 10 percent and 30 percent cost advantages, respectively, over Song.

Delta is in a position of evaluating entry into a new product market, namely, the low-cost carrier market. The question is, can Delta succeed where it has failed before? Can the airline create for itself a business model that can compete with the JetBlues and Southwest Airlines of the industry? Moreover, it may be that their options for operational investments are more limited than those of a brand new carrier such as JetBlue, thereby putting Song at a disadvantage. For example, they will be using their current airline fleet and, as a result, will be unable to take advantage of favorable lease terms offered to new carriers (Daniel 2003). The key to success for this endeavor lies in the ability to create a very different cost structure than the one under which it currently operates. Delta must understand how its current costs behave and, more importantly, anticipate how they will behave in the new business model outlined for Song. Can Delta rely on historical data to predict costs into the future for Delta and for Song? Or has the business model (and the environment) changed in such a fundamental way that Delta can no longer assume "business as usual"?

Questions:

What would be the effect of a sharp decline in passengers for a firm with a microeconomic structure such as the one Delta had in place during 2001? Is Delta’s operating leverage high or low?

Analyze the proposal to launch Song as a response to the situation the firm is facing.

Estimate the salary cost function for Delta. Despite the fact you can choose between some feasible drivers, please use Revenue Passenger Miles for this part of the case. Use the High Low method.

Estimate the salary cost function for JetBlue. Use the high low method.

What conclusion can you make out of the comparison of both cost functions?

Maybe it the method. Please redo 3 and 4 by using simple linear regression?

Did the result of your analysis change?

Can Delta be successful on the new segment? Is the strategy aligned with the microeconomic structure of Delta? (THIS IS A VERY RELEVANT QUESTION)

Some years after Delta’s case situation, salaries were no longer the highest cost for Delta. Fuel prices increased dramatically after 2001. How can you deal with this new profitability threat from a cost management perspective?

If costs cannot come down, how can we improve the profitability of a firm such as Delta? While answering this question remember the components of a profit function.

CASE

Delta's New Song:

A Case on Cost Estimation in the Airline Industry

INTRODUCTION

Founded in 1924, Delta Airlines is the third largest U.S. airline in operating revenues and revenue passenger miles flown. 1 Traditionally, Delta's primary competition came from the other full-service airlines, including United Airlines and American Airlines. However, in recent years, the major airlines have increasingly been forced to compete with low-cost, no-frill airlines pioneered by "fly for peanuts" Southwest Airlines. The significant downturn in passenger volume in the third quarter of 2001 (following the September 11 attacks) served only to increase the head-to-head competition between the majors and the low-cost competitors.

AIRLINE LABOR COSTS

Industry Challenges

Airlines must operate within a low-margin, high-fixed-cost environment, making profitability particularly sensitive to decreases in volume, either from environmental factors (e.g., the September 11,2001 attacks) or from competition. Moreover, the airline business is labor-intensive. Labor costs as a percentage of revenues ranges from a low of about 25 percent for the low-fare airlines to almost 50 percent for the large, full-service airlines such as United (see Exhibit 1).

For many airlines labor unions at various levels of the organization are strong, presenting an additional challenge in the management of costs. Labor union (re)negotiations were on the rise during 2003, as airlines tried to pass along an increasing share of the cost cutting to its employees. In the summer of 2002, US Airways won concessions from its workers corresponding to a 27 percent reduction from its prior year labor costs. Plans to terminate the airline's pilot pension plan, however, met with objections and will likely be resolved in US Airway's bankruptcy hearings. In January of 2003, American Airlines requested an $8 billion concession from the three labor unions representing its labor force. Northwest similarly argued for salary concessions as part of a $ 1 billion cutback (Gary and McCartney 2003).

"Labor costs, especially pilot-labor costs, are on the point of the spear again," Capt John Prater, chairman of the pilot union at Continental Airlines, recently wrote to his members. "Airline managements, Wall Street, the [Bush] administration and Congress are once again looking for a scapegoat to blame for the industry's ailments; so-called 'high-priced, under-worked' pilots have once again become their primary target." A senior pilot in the industry typically earns about $250,000 a year, while a senior mechanic would make about $70,000 and a senior flight attendant about $40,000. (Gary and McCartney 2003)

Delta Airlines

With over 81,000 employees, salaries are a significant component of Delta's cost structure, accounting for over 42 percent of the company's total operating expenses and over 46 percent of total revenues in fiscal year 2002 (see Exhibit 2). As with other airlines, Delta pilots and flight attendants are paid for hours flown. Contracts for unionized personnel guarantee a certain level of hours to unionized employees (with federal regulations providing caps on the number of hours that can be flown by an individual in a month). As a consequence, salaries are largely fixed in the short term for unionized employees. However, Delta is the least unionized of the major airlines. In fact, Delta's pilots are the only unionized employee group (with the exception of a very small contingency of flight operations personnel). Delta's flight attendants and ticket agents are not under union contract; consequently, their salaries, as well as hourly personnel (e.g., ticket counter and ramp operations personnel), represent salaries that are more variable in nature. Moreover, contracted maintenance work creates additional flexibility in salaries costs for Delta.

Since interim wage concessions by pilots of United Airlines (which also filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002), Delta pilots are the highest paid in the industry with an average hourly wage rate for a Boeing 757 captain of $245. The same pilot would earn $178 per hour at Continental Airlines and only $172 per hour at United (post-concession) (Harris 2003b). In February 2003, the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) successfully blocked Delta's plan to furlough an additional 1,700 pilots (Delta had already furloughed 1,600 pilots citing September 11 traffic declines as "circumstances beyond its control"). The ALPA, however, argued that the furloughs were in fact the result of the general economic difficulties the industry was experiencing and, therefore, were in violation of ALPA contracts that prohibit layoffs due to the company's economic

and financial situation. Delta representatives continue to assert the "continuing need to address overall pilot costs to enable Delta to return to a competitive cost structure and to preserve Delta's long-term future" (Setaishi 2003).

DELTA'S SONG

In November 2002, Delta Airlines announced that it would form a new low-cost carrier, Song. Song began service on April 15, 2003 with its first flight between John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and West Palm Beach, Florida (Wong 2003). This was not Delta's first attempt to enter the low-fare market. A previous attempt, Delta Express, was initially profitable but eventually failed because of "a lack of a management team to fight budget wars, cost creep, and brand confusion" (Daniel 2003). Despite this prior unsuccessful attempt to operate a low-cost carrier under the Delta umbrella, Delta asserts its belief that Song will be able to successfully compete in the low-fare industry segment, a segment that has been relatively prosperous amid the industry downturn.

Song operations will be based on the low-cost model of Southwest Airlines (e.g., low fares, low frills, and quick turnarounds) and is targeted to compete with successful newcomer JetBlue. Song will be supported by a single-airliner fleet of 36 Boeing 757s and will provide service to Florida and the East Coast. Like JetBlue, Song flights will feature in-flight entertainment competitive with JetBlue's satellite televisions (Harris 2002).

Can Delta Succeed Where It Has Failed Before?

Overall, Delta expects cost per available seat mile to be about 20 percent lower for Song than it is for its current operations. John Selvaggio, Delta executive and future Song president indicates that airplane utilization will be increased and pilots and flight attendants will experience "more flying and less sitting time" (Harris 2002). What Delta won't do, however, is pay its Song pilots less than the current Delta pilots. Given that Delta pilots' per hour wage rates are, on average, $100 more than those of Southwest and JetBlue, industry analysts are skeptical of the ability of Delta to compete in the low-cost carrier segment. "It's very hard for me to see how they can come very close to the costs of JetBlue and Southwest without closing the labor-cost gaps," said Michael Roach, an associate with Unisys R2A Transportation Management Consultants in Hayward, California (Harris 2003a). In fact, Roach estimates that JetBlue and Southwest would still have 10 percent and 30 percent cost advantages, respectively, over Song.

Delta is in a position of evaluating entry into a new product market, namely, the low-cost carrier market. The question is, can Delta succeed where it has failed before? Can the airline create for itself a business model that can compete with the JetBlues and Southwest Airlines of the industry? Moreover, it may be that their options for operational investments are more limited than those of a brand new carrier such as JetBlue, thereby putting Song at a disadvantage. For example, they will be using their current airline fleet and, as a result, will be unable to take advantage of favorable lease terms offered to new carriers (Daniel 2003). The key to success for this endeavor lies in the ability to create a very different cost structure than the one under which it currently operates. Delta must understand how its current costs behave and, more importantly, anticipate how they will behave in the new business model outlined for Song. Can Delta rely on historical data to predict costs into the future for Delta and for Song? Or has the business model (and the environment) changed in such a fundamental way that Delta can no longer assume "business as usual"?

Questions:

What would be the effect of a sharp decline in passengers for a firm with a microeconomic structure such as the one Delta had in place during 2001? Is Delta’s operating leverage high or low?

Analyze the proposal to launch Song as a response to the situation the firm is facing.

Estimate the salary cost function for Delta. Despite the fact you can choose between some feasible drivers, please use Revenue Passenger Miles for this part of the case. Use the High Low method.

Estimate the salary cost function for JetBlue. Use the high low method.

What conclusion can you make out of the comparison of both cost functions?

Maybe it the method. Please redo 3 and 4 by using simple linear regression?

Did the result of your analysis change?

Can Delta be successful on the new segment? Is the strategy aligned with the microeconomic structure of Delta? (THIS IS A VERY RELEVANT QUESTION)

Some years after Delta’s case situation, salaries were no longer the highest cost for Delta. Fuel prices increased dramatically after 2001. How can you deal with this new profitability threat from a cost management perspective?

If costs cannot come down, how can we improve the profitability of a firm such as Delta? While answering this question remember the components of a profit function.