Simple spreadsheet modeling by first-year business undergraduate students: Difficulties in the transition from real world problem statement to mathematical model

Abstract

The study used a sample of first-year business undergraduate students who developed simple (deterministic & non-optimization) models with Microsoft Excel. The students were required to choose business of their choice and give recommendations to have it profitable or more profitable. To help them achieve this end, the teacher presented to the students his solution regarding a taxi business within a local area, having previously explained to the students various ways to do “what-if” analyses. By referring to the framework of Galbraith and Stillman (2006), this paper mainly presents some of frequent modelers’ difficulties regarding the transition from real world problem statement to mathematical model. These difficulties deal with selecting variables, initializing variables, and relating variables. Possible reasons for such difficulties and suggestions for further research are included.