Management professionals are often relied upon to make decisions regarding operational processes. Those who utilize a data-driven, structured approach have a clear advantage over those offering decisions based solely on intuition. Your task is to review the scenario found in your textbook on page 685-686, the supplemental case study document and the accompanying data set to outline the appropriate analysis strategy; select a suitable statistical method, and use data analysis to ultimately drive the decision. Once this has been completed, you will be challenged to present your data, data analysis strategy, and overall decision in a concise report, justifying your analysis.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

Introduction to the problem:
Provide a concise description of the scenario that you will be analyzing. The following questions might help you describe the scenario: What is the type of the organization identified in the scenario? What is the organization’s history and the problem identified in the scenario?
Create an analysis plan to guide your analysis and decision making: In this section, you will review the data set to inform the statistical method that will be used. To inform your responses in this section, calculate the central tendency of the dependent variable, develop a histogram of the gift amount and develop scatterplots for the gift amount for each independent variable.
Identify any quantifiable factors that may be affecting the performance of operational processes.
Develop a single sentence problem statement that addresses the given problem in the scenario and contains quantifiable measures.
Propose a strategy that addresses the problem of the organization in the given case study.
Identify statistical methods to collect data:
Identify the appropriate statistical methods that you will use to perform your analysis. What are your statistical assumptions concerning the data that led you to select the methods? In other words, why did you select this method for statistical analysis?
Justify why you chose these methods to analyze the data. Be sure to include how these methods will help predict the use of the data in driving decisions using cited evidence.
Data-Driven Decisions to determine the appropriate decision for the identified problem:
Outline the process needed to utilize your statistical analysis to reach a decision regarding the given problem.
Explain how data mining is used to develop a solution to the case. In your response, consider the concepts of metadata.
Explain if the problem is a structured or unstructured problem.
Assess how the variables have the potential for answering the problem.
Recommend operational improvements to stakeholders after you have completed the calculations:
Demonstrate a data-driven calculation that addresses the given problem statement.
Summarize the results of the analysis plan. In your response, be sure to explain the validity of the model solution.
C. Explain how the model solution addresses the given problem statement.