Description

Submission: An electronic version of your group report (saved as a single .pdf format). Your Excel file should be exported as PDF and merged with the PDF of the group report as an appendix. The electronic version is to be submitted through Blackboard.

The group report and Excel file (.xlsx) are to be sent to the course coordinators via email as well. The second piece of assessment in this coursework is an individual report outlining your contribution to the coursework. In the individual report please discuss how you have contributed to the individual questions on the brief (e.g., what you have contributed to formulating the task as a model, and what you have implemented & solved in Excel Solver), the group report writing (e.g. which parts you have written, and which tables/figures you have created). There will be a separate submission link on Blackboard for the individual report, and each student will be submitting her/his individual report individually. We will, however, cross-check individual reports from the same group to get an overall picture on who did what in a group.

Format: Formulate a given task as an appropriate mathematical optimisation model, implement it and solve it using appropriate functionalities provided in Excel Solver. Then summarize your work using Microsoft Word. All core results have to be included in your report, as further detailed in the brief below. Your group report should be around 2000 words (some bullet points will be acceptable), excluding figures, tables and references. In addition, each group member needs to write an individual report of around 500 words describing their contribution to the project and the report. Export the Excel file as PDF, and then merge it with the PDF of the group report as an appendix. There is no limit on the length of your PDF of Excel file. For the report, use a minimum font size of Arial 11pt. Hand-written submissions will NOT be accepted.

While the brief below is broken up into questions/tasks, this is done to help you in guiding your analysis and understanding what tasks must be undertaken. It does not determine the organization of your report and it should not quote the questions/tasks in the brief. Your report should be a coherent piece of work, where you describe the problem at hand, and you explain the steps taken to analyse and solve it. It should contain an introduction section and a conclusion section.

Assessment: Your coursework mark will be determined based on the quality of the group report and the individual contributions. The final coursework mark will count 70% to your overall module mark; the remaining 30% will be made up of your online tests grade. Ensure that the material presented in your report is correct and reproducible. In terms of the presentation of the report, pay attention to things such as layout, font size, keeping to the page limit, spelling, grammar, use of tables and charts, consistent number of decimal places. 

Instruction Files