Quantitative Skills for the Core

Prerequisite Work

You are required to complete the following course lessons in the online MBA Math course at www.mbamath.com before the Quant Skills course. Johnson has purchased an MBA Math subscription for each incoming student.

• Excel: Excel Basics
• Finance: Time Value of Money (Compound Interest, Present and Future Value) Annual Period
• Statistics: Basic Statistics
• Accounting: Balance I (Balance Sheet Basics)
• Accounting: Balance II (Intermediate Balance Sheet)
• Accounting: Income (Income Statement Basics)
• Accounting: Cash Flow (Statement of Cash Flows Basics)

Most other Quant Skills lessons are also covered in the MBA Math online course. You may find it helpful to use the online course to reinforce your understanding of material that does not sink in during class.

Financial Calculator

We know that students may arrive on campus with a variety of financial calculator models. The important features required for MBA classes are time value of money (present value, rate, number of periods, and future value), logarithms, and exponents. We do not teach solution methods using financial calculators in Quant Skills. You are responsible for bringing a financial calculator to class and for learning in advance how to use the important features listed above. You can learn these techniques by working through your calculator’s user manual. Note that manuals can be downloaded via the internet. Financial calculator solutions for the HP 12c are provided as part of the MBA Math exercise solutions at www.mbamath.com.

Laptops and Electronic Devices

Bring your laptop to class on Wednesday. You will not need laptops the other days. To avoid distracting classmates, do not use laptops or other electronic devices in the classroom except during breaks.

Attendance

Each student is expected to attend all class sessions. If an absence is unavoidable, please notify the MBA Program Office in advance. Please discuss with the instructor if you believe that you should skip a session given previous experience with a topic.

Teaching Assistants

Teaching assistants are introduced on the first day.

Evaluation

There is no formal grading of this course. The diagnostic quizzes provide you with a sense of your quantitative skill base so that you can do targeted individual work using the course materials and seek support from the MBA Program Office as appropriate. Quizzes are not collected. Solutions are distributed at the end of each day so that students can evaluate their own work.

Course Materials

The course materials consist of the pre-quizzes and problem session documents in your binder and daily handouts for post-quizzes and quiz solutions.

For each session, your binder contains two documents: the session problems alone and the session problems with solutions. You are strongly discouraged from referring to the solution documents before you have first worked the problems on your own.