Syllabus
ECON 6100-1
Spreadsheet Modeling Craft
CRN: 12671
Spring 2013
Dr. David Tufte
Catalog Description:	Application of quantitative methods to business analysis and decision-making. Fundamental topics of management science are covered including optimization modeling, decision and risk analysis, simulation modeling, linear regression analysis, and forecasting methods.
Pre-Requisites:	Acceptance into graduate business program, and completion of relevant foundation course or sufficient undergraduate coursework.
Location:	Room 207, Dixie-Leavitt Business Building
Time:	4:00 P.M. to 5:20 P.M., Monday and Wednesday
Text:	Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, 3^rd  edition, Excel 2010 Update, by Stephen G. Powell and Kenneth R. Baker, Wiley, 2009.
Office:	Room 313, Dixie-Leavitt
Office Phone:	586-5407
Office Hours:	Monday, 8:10 to 9:00 a.m. Monday, 5:20 to 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, 5:20 to 6:00 p.m. Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Friday, 8:10 to 9:00 a.m. Appointments are available at other times.
E-Mail:	tufte@suu.edu (not case sensitive). This is the best way to reach me.
Website:	http://www.suu.edu/faculty/tufte/
Grades:	Your grade will be based on combined take-home projects, and short, in-class, quizzes. There will be five of these, and they will be evenly weighted. There will also be some remedial homeworks available through Aplia. Collectively, these will count the same as one of the in-class quizzes. I will just total up the number you got right on all of these and take a percentage to form that grade, rather than grading them individually. There will also be a statistics take-home project. If you get a perfect score on this it will not affect your grade. If you do not achieve a perfect score on this before the end of the semester, you will be dropped one full letter grade. If your grade on this project goes down at any time, you will lose 1/3 of a letter grade off of your final average (e.g., you will go down from an A- to a B+). Pluses and minuses will only be given to the top and bottom 20% of the applicable grade ranges.
Grading Philosophy:	The theme of this course is the quantification and clarification of weakly structured and poorly presented business problems. As such, expect to be graded not only on objective numerical accuracy, but also on objective and subjective details including (but not limited to) spelling, grammar, sentence structure, clarity of presentation, organization of materials, labeling, professionalism of font choice and page layouts, elegance of appearance, and ready availability of ancillary and supporting documents. Having said that, for quality control, please stick to black print on white paper.
Quizzes:	You will be given a problem to formulate in a spreadsheet as a take-home problem. You will submit a spreadsheet to me that does not contain your name. In class, your spreadsheet will be randomly assigned to another student. That student will have to answer a question based on your spreadsheet. Both of you will get a grade based on the performance of the answering student. I will use my subjective judgment to determine whether the author or the user was responsible for each mistake.
Quiz Dates:	To be determined today.
Quiz Materials:	Exams will be given in this room. They are open book, open notes, open internet access, and so on. Talking and the passing of written notes will not be permitted. Other communication is permitted: please keep in mind that no one else will be using the spreadsheet you are, and the author of that spreadsheet will have their own set of “headaches” to deal with from the spreadsheet they received.
Quiz Attendance:	Attendance is required at quizzes, in a virtual sense: you must be able to connect to me through the internet.
Statistics Project:	This is a 35 question take home multiple choice exam. You may work on this together. You must turn this in on Wednesday of each week until you achieve a perfect score. You do not need a scantron. Instead, turn in your answers typed into a single column of a spreadsheet. You will be graded on this like an SAT exam: for each question with n choices, you will receive n point for a correct answer, zero points for leaving the answer blank, and you will lose 1 point for each wrong answer. A key for this exam will not be posted. Only a score will be reported to you. If your score does not decrease each time you will not be penalized. If your score goes down, you will lose 1/3 of a letter grade off your final grade. If you do not achieve a perfect score by the last class day of the semester, you will lose a complete letter grade off your final grade.
Attendance:	Regular attendance is required at all class meetings.
Course Outline:	The text for this class is not linear in structure. You should be very familiar with Chapter 3, and the Appendix, from earlier classes. Ideally, you will also have had some exposure to Chapters 4, 7-11, and 14. These are the areas you need to be examining now to get a handle on your own weaknesses. We will cover Chapters 1-6 in January. After that, we will cover Chapters 7-8, 10-13, and 15-16.
Independent Reading:	This is primarily a lab rather than a lecture class. As such, please make a point of reading the chapters before class.
Professionalism:	Coursework in the School of Business is rigorous and may be more demanding than you have previously experienced. Be aware that grades are intended to differentiate students by performance. Prepare accordingly, and put forth sufficient effort. Conduct in the School of Business should be professional at all times: attend class, arrive and leave on time, treat others with respect, strive to be concise, and seek help when needed. You should treat all assignments as if they are a professional work product. Each should be of a quality that you would submit to a client or supervisor. They should be clearly written, and in standard grammatically correct English.
Academic Integrity:	Scholastic dishonesty will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent. You are expected to have read and understood the current issue of the student handbook (published by Student Services) regarding student responsibilities and rights, and the intellectual property policy, for information about procedures and about what constitutes acceptable on-campus behavior.
Disability Statement:	Students with medical, psychological, learning or other disabilities desiring academic adjustments, accommodations, or auxiliary aids, must contact the Disability Support Center, Room 206 F, Sharwan Smith Center, phone (435) 865-8022. The Disability Support Center determines eligibility for and authorizes the provision of these services and aids.
Learning Objectives:	The goal of this course is the partial fulfillment of the fourth M.B.A. leaning objective: Students will effectively use strategic analysis and decision-making skills, supported by appropriate quantitative methods and information technology. This is achieved here by a focus on the use of Excel, one of the primary pieces of information technology in use in business today, to execute appropriate quantitative methods which generate information for informed decision-making. While this is not a strategic analysis class, many of the problems will involve a level of detail and interconnectedness common in strategic problems.
Disclaimer:	Information contained in this syllabus, other than the grading, late assignments, makeup work, and attendance policies, may be subject to change with advance notice, as deemed appropriate by the instructor.