個案總覽

In January 2013, John C. Liu, New York City's comptroller, wrote to the residents of the city about his audit of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR). Liu summarized his office's findings: "The audit found that DPR was not carrying out and overseeing capital construction projects in a timely and cost effective manner." To investigate the existence of the "planning fallacy" in organizations, information from nearly 1,800 capital projects undertaken between 1998 and 2008 was obtained from the office of the chief engineer of the New York City DPR. In light of the data, how severe was the planning fallacy during this time and could it be used for overcoming the planning fallacy?

In January 2013, John C. Liu, New York City's comptroller, wrote to the residents of the city about his audit of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR). Liu summarized his office's findings: "The audit found that DPR was not carrying out and overseeing capital construction projects in a timely and cost effective manner." To investigate the existence of the "planning fallacy" in organizations, information from nearly 1,800 capital projects undertaken between 1998 and 2008 was obtained from the office of the chief engineer of the New York City DPR. In light of the data, how severe was the planning fallacy during this time and could it be used for overcoming the planning fallacy?

"This case serves to illustrate how averaging point forecasts harnesses the wisdom of crowds. Students access data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and compare the performance of the crowd (i.e., the average point forecasts) to the average performance of the individual panelists and the best performer from the previous period. The case is intended for use in a class on forecasting, and the instructor can present it in three ways: with all necessary SPF data cleaned and preprocessed in a student spreadsheet (UVA-QA-0805X, provided with the case); with code (also provided in the student spreadsheet) written by the case authors in R, the statistical computing package, as well as a supplementary handout (UVA-QA-0805H, also provided with the case), which walks students through R code, explaining how to clean and analyze the SPF data; or as a team project to be worked on over several days, providing neither the spreadsheet nor the supplement. The latter would be an excellent exercise in data retrieval, cleaning, reshaping, and analysis."

Spreadsheet for case UV6514

Chisholm University's new athletics director must reallocate the athletics budget in its entirety, balancing legal obligations with broader educational and financial goals. A committee appointed to work on this issue had failed to reach consensus due to disagreements about how to comply with Title IX, the law mandating gender parity in all educational offerings, including athletics. The athletics director has the facts organized into an optimization problem so she can systematically balance the tradeoffs and manage system demands or constraints.

A large general-merchandise retailer misses its fiscal year earnings-per-share guidance, so its CFO is charged with improving the firm's forecasts. This case presents the use of probability distributions for forecasting discrete and continuous uncertainties such as GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment, including the benefit of ranges and distributions over point estimates. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters is introduced as a source of forecasts

This technical note, based on the more comprehensive note, "Eliciting and Evaluating Expert Forecasts" (UVA-QA-0734), provides a streamlined presentation of Brier and log scores as tools for assessing forecasting records among a pool of experts. The note is designed to be used in conjunction with a forecasting exercise.

Spreadsheet Supplement for cases UV5612 and UV5616.

In this case series, Margaret Ballis, a soon-to-be Darden School of Business graduate, is about to begin her dream job at a leading investment management firm. On her way to becoming a fund manager, she cannot help wondering about her future success. Ballis is trying to assess her ability to consistently outperform the stock market; she questions whether it is even possible to achieve persistent performance as a fund manager. Using data downloaded from Morningstar, Inc., on 2,852 mutual funds, students are prompted to investigate whether funds that beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark during a five-year period are more likely to beat the Index over the next five-year period. Students are asked to take a closer look at the "hot hand" phenomenon by investigating investors' reactions to streaks of outperformance and examining whether funds that outperformed their peers several years in a row also outgrow their peers in terms of size. The A case (UVA-F-1621) and its supplement (UVA-F-1623) can be used to support an introductory class in data analysis with an emphasis on PivotTables, data filtering, and regressions. The B case (UVA-F-1622) can be used to support a more advanced financial analysis for students with some exposure to the CAPM model. There are two supplemental spreadsheets: one for students (UVA-F-1621X) and one for instructors (UVA-F-1621TNX).

In this case series, Margaret Ballis, a soon-to-be Darden School of Business graduate, is about to begin her dream job at a leading investment management firm. On her way to becoming a fund manager, she cannot help wondering about her future success. Ballis is trying to assess her ability to consistently outperform the stock market; she questions whether it is even possible to achieve persistent performance as a fund manager. Using data downloaded from Morningstar, Inc., on 2,852 mutual funds, students are prompted to investigate whether funds that beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark during a five-year period are more likely to beat the Index over the next five-year period. Students are asked to take a closer look at the "hot hand" phenomenon by investigating investors' reactions to streaks of outperformance and examining whether funds that outperformed their peers several years in a row also outgrow their peers in terms of size.

Spreadsheet for case UV6277