Introduction

This discussion will assess your ability to apply what you have learned this week using the sales data of a real company. You will also test your opinions and ideas against the ideas and opinions of your classmates.

Instructions

Select a corporation you are interested in and find that corporation’s annual reports for five consecutive years. Study these five annual reports and find the corporation’s total revenue (sales in dollar units) for each of those five years.

How to get sales data using Mergent onlineLinks to an external site.

Perform the given tasks to prepare for the discussion:

• Prepare a time series plot of these data (years on the x axis, sales on the y axis).
• Use the first naive model you learned about in Week 1 to forecast data for year 6.
• Plot the actual data along with your forecast data.

Post your graph with your answer to the given question:

• Based on your graph of the actual data, do you think there is a trend in the data? Is there any seasonal variation? Please explain your reasoning.

Data sources and help with graphs

• You can access the Mergent Online database using your login information. Mergent Online contains annual reports of many public corporations.
• The Yahoo! Finance Company and Fund Index offers company profiles, financial information, and links to a range of resources. Write the company name in the search bar and select the financials tab on the screen.
• Watch the given video if you do not know how to plot data in Excel:
  • Igines. (2012, December 9). How to make a line graph in excel (scientific data)Links to an external site. [Video file] [6 min 41 sec]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xn7Sd5Uu42A

Directions

• Make your initial post by Day 4 of this week and comment on at least two of your classmates’ posts by Day 7.
• Post your response to the discussion and then read your classmates’ posts. Post TWO responses to at least TWO of your classmates’ posts. Initial post should be no less than 150 words and no more than 450 words.
• Discussions need to be professional. Please make proper use of capitalization and punctuation and make sure that there are no misspellings, incomplete sentences, or other grammatical errors.
• The basic criterion for a discussion post to be considered effective is that your message is original and intelligible. You must communicate concisely and clearly.

Evaluation Criteria

All discussions together make up 23% of the total course score. This discussion is worth 46 points. Here is the rubric Download rubricfor this discussion.

Requirements: 1-2 pages