The final exam is cumulative - it covers all aspects of the course. It will be similar to the midterm exam, but cover a different industry/product and ask for financial analysis as well as the rest of the analyses we learned this quarter.
Notes on Midterm: Like the homeworks, you have one week to correct your midterm and turn in both the original midterm and your corrections in class on Tuesday, May 17. You will get 80% of your score on corrected answers.
Note on Homework #4 grading:
If your answer for Question 4.b related to Apple's cash was $21,120 million, we marked it incorrect, but we will give you the point back. Apple's filings list Cash and Cash Equivalents at that amount, while the much larger number many students gave that got full credit was Cash and Marketable Securities. So please show your HW#4 to Professor Haddad if you lost this point and I will restore it.
Notes on Homework #3: The homework asks you to use "structured problem solving" as a framework for the overall exercise. The only questions you need to do this for are 1, 2, and 3. There are two resources on structured problem solving, the notes from Lecture Three, and the handout above. The two resources describe the process slightly differently. In the handout, Step 3 includes all the execution steps - fully implementing the plan developed in Step 2. Then, Step 4 is a check-your-work step. In the lecture, Step 3 is divided into two parts - data gathering and (Step 4) analysis. There is no "check your work" step. You can use either approach in your homework. (The handout approach may work better in this case.) In terms of how to actually integrate the structured problem solving approach into your homework, if you use the handout, first define the homework question as the problem to be solved, then describe your planned approach to answer the question as step 2, then implement the approach in step 3, then explain how you checked and improved your work in step 4, and finally describe what you learned both about the problem and about your approach to solving it in step 5. If you use the course notes, make the appropriate adjustments. Good luck on HW 3!
Homework policies:
Policy on late homework: Homework is due in class on the Thursday specified, and should be in physical form (on paper). When Professor Haddad leaves class after lecture, homework not turned in yet is late. If it is turned in to Professor Haddad before class starts the following Tuesday, it will earn 80% of its actual score. No points are available after that. This applies to all homeworks except Homework 1.
Policy on improving your homework score: The homeworks should be returned on the Tuesday following the due date. From that time forward, students have one week to redo any questions in which they didn't get full credit. Turn in both your original homework and your corrected homework attached to each other in class the following Tuesday. We will regrade the redone questions and give you 80% of the additional points earned.
Problem Set One (and Project Launch)
Project Phase 4 Hint: there is an "etc." related to important ratios to compute as part of Task 2 in this project. (There is also an "etc." near the bottom of p. 11 in the Lecture 16 notes.) Both of these etc.s refer to metrics at the end of Lecture 12 and the financial metrics presented in Lecture 13.
(no lecture 2 notes were generated)
Lecture 9 (note: on p 3, under Product Strategy/conceptual design, I added Selection Criteria (SC) at the end of the list. Selection Criteria are the qualities you use to rank the alternative designs. Examples are technical feasibility, aesthetics, price, etc.)
Lecture 10 (Note: on p. 9, it should read "HW 2 PT 2 steps")
Lecture 11 (May 2) was the Midterm Exam.
Lecture 15 was a guest lecture by Mr. Bud Colligan. No notes are available.
Lecture17 included a review of HW 5 and discussion of the final exam. See the note above for a summary of the discussion.
Lecture 18 was a guest lecture by Mr. Paul Vrooman giving his perspective on the venture capital process from both sides of the table.
Lecture 19 included in-class presentations by teams 2, 6, 7, and 8. The rest of the teams present on Thursday!
Professor Brent Haddad (instructor)
Sabina Tomkins (Assistant)