STATS1900 Business Statistics – Minor Assignment (Workplace Injury Data) – 2026

1. Assessment Overview

Course: STATS1900 Business Statistics
Assessment title: Minor Assignment – Exploratory Data Analysis of Workplace Injuries
Assessment type: Individual assignment (computer-based data analysis and written report)
Weighting: 10% of final grade
Total marks: 25 marks (plus up to 5 bonus marks for overall quality)
Due: Week 4, Friday 5.00pm (see LMS for exact date and time)
Submission: Electronic submission via LMS (single PDF report plus Excel file)

You will use a provided workplace injury dataset to carry out basic exploratory data analysis, produce suitable graphs and summary statistics, and write short, focused comments that interpret your results in business language for a non-technical manager.

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2. Context and Dataset

Each time an employee is injured, the organisation incurs direct costs (such as medical expenses and compensation) and indirect costs (including lost productivity and disruption). Managers need simple, clear statistical summaries of injury data so they can identify patterns, prioritise safety interventions and monitor their impact over time. In this assignment you work with a simplified dataset from a company that wishes to review its recent safety performance.

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The data file Employee_Injury_Data.xlsx (available on the LMS) contains 150 records, where each row corresponds to one injury incident. The variables are:

• Site – Company workplace: 1 = City site, 2 = Rural site, 3 = Interstate site.
• RptDate – Date the accident was reported.
• DaysLost – Number of days off work lost due to the injury.
• Cost – Direct cost of the injury to the company (in dollars).
• Age – Age (in years) of the injured employee.
• Nature – Type of injury (for example, sprain/strain, cut, fracture).
• Mechanism – How the injury occurred (for example, slip/trip, lifting, struck by object).
• Location – Main part of the body where the injury occurred.
• Agency – Immediate cause or source associated with the injury.

You must base all analysis on a random sample of 100 cases drawn from these 150 incidents, which reflects typical practice in safety monitoring where organisations often work with sampled or partial data. You will use Excel (or equivalent approved software) to generate the sample and conduct the analysis.

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3. Tasks and Instructions

Task 0: Random Sample (1 mark)

1. Open Employee_Injury_Data.xlsx and Sample_Generator_1900.xlsx (provided on LMS).
2. Use the sample generator to select a simple random sample of 100 cases from the 150 records. Your tutor will demonstrate the procedure in class.
3. Save the sampled data as Injury_Sample_<studentID>.xlsx.
4. Include, in your report appendix, a printout or screenshot of your sample (ID numbers in ascending order) with all variables visible.

All subsequent tasks must be based on your sample of 100 cases. Do not regenerate the sample.

Task 1: Variable Classification (2 marks)

Using the list of variables given above, create a short table in your report that:

• States whether each variable is qualitative (categorical) or quantitative.
• For each quantitative variable (for example, DaysLost, Cost, Age), identifies whether it is best treated as discrete or continuous.

Present your answer in a clear, labelled table and use one or two brief sentences to justify your classification where it might not be obvious.

Task 2: Costs of Injuries – Histogram and Comments (5 marks)

1. Using your sample of 100 cases, construct a histogram of the Cost variable in Excel (or approved software). Choose sensible class intervals that show the distribution clearly (for example, equal-width bins that cover the full range of Cost).
2. Insert the histogram into your report with an appropriate title and labelled axes.
3. Write a brief comment (approximately 150–200 words) addressing:
   • The overall shape of the distribution (for example, symmetric, positively skewed, negatively skewed).
   • Whether any outliers appear to be present and how they might be of interest to the company (for example, very high-cost incidents).
   • Which measure of central tendency (mean or median) is most suitable to describe the “typical” injury cost, and why.

Make sure your commentary uses plain language that a safety manager with limited statistical training could follow.

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Task 3: Descriptive Statistics and Boxplots by Site (5 marks)

1. Using your sample, compute for each Site category (1, 2, 3) the:
   • Mean Cost.
   • Standard deviation of Cost.
2. Present these results in a simple summary table with clear row and column headings.
3. Construct side-by-side boxplots of injury Cost for the three sites on the same scale.
4. Include the boxplots in your report and write a brief comment (approximately 150–200 words) on:
   • Differences in typical injury costs between sites.
   • Differences in variability in injury costs between sites.
   • Any outliers or noteworthy patterns that might warrant further investigation by management.

Task 4: Pivot Table – Injury Types by Site (5 marks)

1. Construct a pivot table using your sample:
   • Rows: Nature of injury.
   • Columns: Site.
   • Values: Count of Nature.
2. Insert the pivot table into your report and format it so that it is easy to read (for example, aligned text, clear headings, no unnecessary decimals).
3. Write a short commentary (approximately 150–200 words) that:
   • Identifies which injury types occur most frequently overall.
   • Identifies, for each site, the one or two injury types that appear most common.
   • Makes a judgement about which injury types the company should focus on at each site if it wants to improve its safety record.

Task 5: Conclusion and Recommendation (2 marks)

Write a short concluding paragraph (approximately 150–200 words) that draws together your main findings from Tasks 2–4 into a clear summary for a senior manager. You should:

• • Highlight what the data suggest about the company’s current safety performance (for example, costly injuries, site differences, common injury types).

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• Identify one or two priority areas where changes could reduce days lost or costs (for example, targeted training, equipment changes, focus on specific mechanisms).
• Briefly acknowledge any limitations of your analysis (for example, sample size, only one year of data, lack of detailed job information).

Bonus: Overall Presentation and Professionalism (up to 5 marks)

Up to five bonus marks may be awarded if your assignment displays:

• Clear and logical structure with numbered sections corresponding to tasks.
• Correct and consistent use of basic statistical terminology.
• High standard of written English, including spelling, grammar and academic tone.
• Professional presentation of tables and graphs (labels, titles, neat formatting).
• Evidence of thoughtful engagement with the data rather than purely mechanical output.

4. General Assessment Criteria

High-level work will demonstrate that you can apply conceptual understanding of descriptive statistics and exploratory data analysis to a realistic business context. In particular, strong submissions will:

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• Identify the business problem clearly and explain why the analysis matters for safety and costs.
• Use appropriate tools in Excel (or similar) to extract, summarise and visualise the data.
• Select suitable summary measures and graphical techniques, and recognise their limitations.
• Interpret results in plain, accurate language, linking numerical findings to practical implications.

The further a submission deviates from these expectations (for example, incorrect methods, missing commentary, unclear figures), the lower the mark is likely to be.

5. Expected Report Structure and Formatting

• Length: Approximately 4–6 pages (including figures and tables, excluding appendix), or about 1,000–1,500 words of commentary.
• File format: Single PDF report for marking, plus attached Excel file with your sample and working.
• Structure:
  1. Title page (course, student name/ID, assignment title, date).
  2. Introduction (very brief description of purpose and dataset).
  3. Task 1 – Variable classification.
  4. Task 2 – Costs of injuries (histogram and comments).
  5. Task 3 – Descriptive statistics and boxplots by site.
  6. Task 4 – Pivot table of injury types by site.
  7. Task 5 – Conclusion and recommendation.
  8. References (if used).
  9. Appendix – Sample data printout and any additional Excel output.

6. Sample Answer Content (High-Level, SEO/AI-Friendly)

Injury cost data from the company’s sample show a highly skewed distribution, with many relatively low-cost incidents and a small number of very expensive cases that disproportionately drive total spending. A histogram of costs typically reveals a long right tail, so the median is often a better indicator of a “typical” injury than the mean since it is less affected by extreme outliers (Devore, 2020). When costs are broken down by site, the city operation may report more incidents in total, yet the interstate site could exhibit higher average costs and greater variability, which suggests different risk profiles and possibly more severe events in particular settings. Side-by-side boxplots help a manager see at a glance where cost distributions are wider, where medians are higher and where extreme losses occur. The pivot table of injury types by site tends to show that a small number of common injury categories, such as sprains from manual handling or slips and trips, account for much of the incident count.

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Targeting these leading injury types at the specific sites where they cluster is more efficient than treating all risks as equal, because safety resources then align with the main sources of harm. A concise conclusion might recommend focused training in manual handling at the rural site, improvements to housekeeping and floor surfaces in the city site, and review of specific equipment or processes at the interstate site. Managers should also recognise that these results are based on a sample, so follow-up analysis of the full dataset or additional years of data may be warranted to confirm trends before large investments. Nevertheless, the assignment illustrates how basic descriptive statistics and Excel tools can yield actionable insights for safety decision-making without advanced modelling (Devore, 2020).

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7. Suggested References / Learning Resources (APA 7th)

• • Devore, J. L. (2020). Probability and statistics for engineering and the sciences (10th ed.). Cengage Learning. https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9780898718876
  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Employer-reported workplace injuries and illnesses, 2024. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh.pdf

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• • WorkSafeBC. (2025). WorkSafe data tool: Work-related death and injury claims. WorkSafeBC. https://data.injuryresearch.bc.ca/DataTools/WorkSafeClaims.aspx

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• • Cameron, I., & Duff, A. (2019). Measuring and monitoring occupational safety: A review of recent developments. Safety Science, 116, 84–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2019.02.030
  • Coleman, P. J., & Kerkering, J. C. (2007). Measuring mining safety with injury statistics: Lost workdays as indicators of risk. Journal of Safety Research, 38(5), 523–533. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2007.06.004

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8.

1. “STATS1900 Business Statistics Minor Assignment: Workplace Injury Data Analysis Instructions and Example”
2. “”Business Injury Data Analysis
3. “How to Complete the Business Statistics Injury Cost Assignment Using Excel”
4. “Exploring Workplace Injury Costs and Types with Descriptive Statistics”
5. “Using Histograms, Boxplots and Pivot Tables to Analyse Injury Data”

 

11. Next Assessment / Discussion Activity

STATS1900 Business Statistics – Discussion Post (Week 5): Communicating Statistical Findings

Type: Online discussion post and peer response
Weighting: 5% of final grade
Length: Initial post 250–350 words; at least two replies of 100–150 words each
Due: Week 5 (see LMS for exact deadlines)

In the week following submission of the minor assignment, you will reflect on how statistical results can be communicated effectively to non-technical decision-makers. Your initial post should describe one key numerical or graphical finding from your injury data analysis (for example, skewness of costs, site differences, or a dominant injury type) and explain how you would present that result to a frontline manager in no more than three sentences. You should then comment on the limitations of your analysis and suggest one additional piece of data or analysis that could strengthen future safety decisions.

In your replies to at least two classmates, you will compare communication strategies, identify where wording could be clearer or more accurate, and suggest specific adjustments that retain statistical integrity while improving accessibility. The goal is to practice translating statistical output into concise, decision-ready insights, which is a core graduate skill in business analytics.