You are a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company and you must present an analysis of the financial data to the executives.

My fortune 500 company is: UnitedHealth Group http://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/unitedhealth-gr...

Select a publicly traded company in the same industry as the company you work for or one that you would like to work.

Locate the company's annual report and any other available data (e.g. units manufactured, revenue, etc.) that is available for the last 5 years.

Use one of the company's historical data sets to calculate the standard deviation of the selected data for the last 5 years.

Discuss what the standard deviation means.

Analyze data using variance and standard deviation.

Create a 10-slide Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation including detailed speaker notes in which you include the following:

• Graph the company's selected financial data.
• Explain the role of standard deviation in financial analysis.
• Explain any other uses for standard deviation in a business setting

Individual Assignment: The Business Side of Standard Deviation

 

Purpose of Assignment

 

Standard deviation is an important concept that can be used in business to analyze financial data. The Week 3 individual assignment provides students the chance to look at the historical financial data of a real world company and find out how to apply statistical concepts to business uses.