Quantitive Techniques for Business (MA208)
Lectures: Monday, 12-1, Room BS118
Wednesday, 2-3, Room BS118
Tutorial: Monday 1-2
Lecturer: Graham Ellis
11 Distillery Road
(ext: 3011,
e-mail:graham.ellis(at)nuigalway.ie)
Tutor: Fintan
Hegarty
Text: "Applied
Mathematics for Business, Economics, and the Social Sciences"
by Frank S. Budrick
Assessment:
The course will be assessed by an exam at the end of Semester I (80%)
and a mid-term class test (20%).
The
exam and test will assume that you have studied the homework
sheets and past exam papers!
Course Description:
- Topic 1: Straight lines and Inequalities (Students will learn how
to maximize 2-variable profit functions subject to linear constraints.)
- Topic 2: Systems of three or more linear equations and matrix
methods. (Students will learn to solve systems of equations arising
from resource allocation problems.)
- Topic 3: Interest rates and net present values. (Students will
learn about the value of government bills, and how to compare simple
business cash-flow models using net present values.)
- Topic 4: Descriptive statistics. (Students will learn to describe
experimental data using medians, modes, means, percentiles, variances
and histograms.)
- Topic 5: Probability. (Students will will learn to calculate the
expected value of financial random variables, and learn to place
financial values on information such as weather forecasts.)
Homework
sheet 1. (Inequalities)
Homework
sheet 2. (Matrices)
Homework
sheet 3. (Probability)
Homework
sheet 4. (Actuarial)
2006-07
exam paper.
2007-08
exam paper.
The following handouts may be useful. They were produced by Dr Andrew
Marsh.
Handout 1: (not yet available)
Handout
2: Gaussian Elimination
Handout
3: Matrices
Handout
4: Linear Programming
Handout
5: Linear Programming (continued)
Handout
6: Calculus
Handout
7: Probability