SMU Classification: Restricted

IS102 Computer as an Analysis Tool

IS102 Computer as an Analysis Tool

2017-18 Term2 Final Exam

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
 Time allowed for this examination paper is TWO (2) HOURS.
 This examination paper contains TWO (2) QUESTIONS and comprises FOURTEEN (14)
PAGES inclusive of this instruction sheet. You are required to answer ALL questions
within the spaces provided in the examination paper.
 This is an OPEN BOOK examination.
 You are ALLOWED to use a laptop but must DISABLE ALL NETWORK CONNECTIONS.
 There shall be NO ENQUIRY during the exam. State any assumptions if necessary when
you answer the questions.

Student Name:
Seat No

Section: G Exam Venue:

Instructor Name:

Marks Awarded

Question 1 12

Question 2 13

TOTAL 25

Question 1 (12 marks)

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Note: This question has multiple parts, and all of them refer to the screenshot in Figure 1
which consists of multiple Tables. Please follow the cell references closely.

Figure 1

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Company Y is an online video sharing platform. Its subscribers upload user-generated video
content and share with the community. By hosting the rich video content provided by its
subscribers and facilitating their interactions, Company Y attracts and retains a large user
base, and generates revenue through advertising. However, it has to bear the considerable
cost of storing the huge volume of video clips in a fast and reliable backend storage.

Currently, Company Y rents the cloud storage service provided by another company
(Company A) for video storage. Company A offers multiple service levels at different prices
as given by Table 1 below:
 The Premium cloud storage service guarantees 100% accessibility with no delay, thus 0%
average failure rate.
 The Low-frequency cloud storage service generates an average of 1% access failure rate
with no delay.
 The Archive-mode storage service, however, generates access delay of three to four
minutes on an average, but with no access failures. The actual delay time follows a
uniform distribution ranging from 3 to 4 minutes.

Part 1
Company Y knows from its own internal studies that users on its video sharing platform will
give up and exit the website if the waiting time is too long. In this sense, a delay leading to
an exit introduces an equivalent failure rate. The average delay failure rate for 3 minutes
delay is 70%. Then the failure rate increases by 5% for every 10 seconds of additional delay.
For example, the failure rate will be 75% when the delay is 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

Build a table of Failure Rates due to delay in the range B8:C14 in Table 2. Use this table to
compute the Average Failure Rate for Archive-mode in cell E4 in Table 1.

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Provide the formula and value in cell E4 for the Average Failure Rate below.

Cell E4 Marks
Formula 0.5

Value 0.5

Part 2
At present, Company Y is using the Premium cloud storage service for all its video content,
regardless of the age of the video clip, to provide 100% accessibility with no delay. The
average size of each piece of video is 20MB (assume 1000MB = 1GB) as given in cell G3. The
CTO is concerned about the huge cost involved and is considering adopting different service
levels based on the access frequency of the video clip.

A newly released video clip attracts a high number of access, but the access rate goes down
as the video clip ages. After monitoring the access frequencies of their whole stock of videos
for a few months, his team summarized the DAILY access rate and frequency for each video
clip according to the age as listed in Table 3.

 In total, there are 10 groups of video stock in terms of their age (cells B18:C27).
 For each video group, the Percentage of Videos Accessed per day is the ratio of the
number of unique video clips that have been accessed at least once within the day over
the total stock in that group (cells D18:D27).
 For each video group, the Number of Times Video accessed is the number of times each
video clip is accessed within a day on an average (cells E18:E27).
 Currently, the company has the stock of video clips with different age (cells F18:F27).

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Table 4 will tabulate all the costs incurred for 3 different policies (Current, Proposed and
Optimized) which will be computed in the following parts for comparison purpose.

In cell F8, compute the current Total Daily Storage Cost of storing all the video content of
Company Y on Premium cloud storage service. Provide the formula and value in cell F8 for
the Current Total Daily Storage Cost.

Cell F8 Marks
Formula 0.5

Value 0.5

Part 3
The CTO of Company Y feels that he can reduce the storage cost by using the information in
Table 3. He proposes a storage policy called the (I) Proposed Storage Policy for different
service levels (Premium, Low-Frequency or Archive-Mode) according to the values in cells
G18:I27 in Table 3A.

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Note that the percentage of the video stock for each service level set in cells G18:I27 should
add to 100% for each Video Group. You can set the desired percentage for Premium and
Low-Frequency service levels in cells G18:H27, and compute the remaining percentage for
Archive-Mode service level using a formula in cells I18:I27. Based on this policy, compute
the following:
 Daily Storage Cost (cells J18:J27)
 Daily Failure Rate (cells K18:K27)
 Number of Daily Failures (cells L18:L27)

Provide the formula and value for the Daily Storage Cost in cell J18. Note that the formula
must be able to be filled down to all cells below.

Cell J18 Marks

Formula 1

Value 0.5

Provide the formula and value for the Daily Failure Rate in cell K18. Note that the formula
must be able to be filled down to all cells below.

Cell K18 Marks

Formula 1

Value 0.5

Provide the formula and value for the Number of Daily Failures in cell L18 (specify the
answer to 1 decimal place).

Cell L18 Marks

Formula 1

Value 0.5

Part 4
Based on the computations from Part 3 for the CTO’s (I) Proposed Storage Policy, calculate
the following in Table 4:
 Total Daily Storage Cost in cell F9.
 Cost due to Access Failure in cell G9, if each failure of access will result in advertising
cost of $0.10 (given in cell H3).
 Total Policy Cost in cell H9.

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Provide the formula and value for the Total Daily Storage Cost in cell F9. Note that the
formula must be able to be filled down to all cells below.

Cell F9 Marks
Formula 0.5

Value 0.5

Provide the formula and value for the Cost due to Access Failure in cell G9. Note that the
formula must be able to be filled down to all cells below.

Cell G9 Marks
Formula 1

Value 0.5

Part 5
The CTO of Company Y feels that there must be a better storage policy called the (II)
Optimized Storage Policy, and tasks you with coming up with a better storage allocation in
cells M18:O27 in Table 3B. Note that the values in the screenshot below are the suggested
initial values. Similar to G18:I27, the percentage of the video stock for each service level set
in cells M18:O27 should add to 100% for each Video Group. You can set the desired
percentage for Premium and Low-Frequency service levels in cells M18:N27, and compute
the remaining percentage for Archive-Mode service level using a formula in cells O18:O27.

Once you have determined the optimal storage allocation, complete the table by computing
the following:
 Daily Storage Cost (cells P18:P27)
 Daily Failure Rate (cells Q18:Q27)
 Number of Daily Failures (cells R18:R27)

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Use the initial values given, set up an optimization model with SOLVER and provide the
following answers:

Solver Setting Cell Number OR Constraint Inequality Marks

Objective Cell 0.25

Changing Cell(s) 0.5

Constraints 0.5

After optimization, enter the optimized storage allocation table below (1 Mark).

Columns M N O
Rows Standard Low-Frequency Archive-Mode
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

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IS102 Computer as an Analysis Tool

Based on the optimized solution from the (II) Optimized Storage Policy, calculate the
following in Table 4:
 Total Daily Storage Cost in cell F10.
 Cost due to Access Failure in cell G10, if each failure of access will result in advertising
cost of $0.10 (given in cell H3).
 Total Policy Cost in cell H10.

Provide the formula and value for the Total Policy Cost in cell H10.

Cell H10 Marks

Formula 0.25

Value 0.5

Question 2 (13 marks)

Bikesharing has taken off in a big way in Singapore with multiple companies putting in
thousands of bikes at various locations. Unfortunately, people have been parking bikes at
odd locations and this has caused a major hassle for both the bike sharing companies and
the people using the pavements and roads.

In this question, we consider this problem in the context of ISIOZ bike sharing company and
a small locality with 3 valid locations, and a 4 th location that is NOT a valid location
(corresponds to errant parking).

Table 1 below provides the ideal number of bikes at each of the four locations in column C
(C4:C7). At the beginning of the day (at T = 0), the bike sharing company places that ideal
number of bikes at each of the locations. Results in columns D, E, F and G will be computed
later, where:
 Column D shows the number of bikes departing from locations 1, 2 and 3
 Column E shows the number of bikes arriving at locations 1, 2, 3 and 4
 Column F shows the number of bikes remaining at locations 1, 2, 3 and 4 at T = 1
 Column G shows the number of bikes in excess of the ideal number at locations 1, 2,
3 and 4. The numbers in this column will be 0 or positive.

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IS102 Computer as an Analysis Tool

Customers move the bikes from one location to another during a time period. Table 2
provides the possible number of customers (in D11:D22) that will move bikes from each
source location to each destination location, and the chances (in cells E11:E22) that they will
rent the bike on any given day. Cells F11:F22 indicate the simulated number of bikes moved
from each source location to each destination location. Cells G11:G22 indicate the revenue
obtained due to renting of bikes between source and destination.

A. Provide a formula in cell F11 to compute the number of bikes that will be moved from a
source to a destination location. This formula should be dragged down to compute the
number of bikes for all source-destination pairs.
Hint: Number of bikes moved will follow a binomial distribution. Random outcomes
from a binomial distribution can be generated using CRITBINOM or BINOMINV functions.

Cell Answer Marks

F11 1

B. With the simulated number of bikes moved in part A, we can now compute the results
for columns D, E and F in Table 1. Provide formulae to compute the number of departing

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bikes (D4), arriving bikes (E4) and remaining bikes (F4) for each location. Please ensure
that these formulae can be dragged down for all locations.

Cell Answer Marks

D4 0.5

E4 0.5

F4 0.5

G4 0.5

C. The model in Table 1 only computes a single scenario of available bikes at each of the
locations after one time period. Generate 100 scenarios and provide the expected
number of remaining bikes at each location. Describe how these 100 scenarios were
generated and provide the average values in the table below for each of the four
locations.

Brief Description Marks

Location Average Values Marks

1 0.25

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2 0.25

3 0.25

4 0.25

D. Bike sharing company makes money when a bike is moved between any two locations.
Rental value charged by the company when a customer rents a bike between a source
location (in cells I4:I7) and a destination location (in cells J3:M3) are provided in Table 3.

Similarly, there is a cost to move extra bikes back to the ideal configuration (B4:C7 in
Table 1), given in cells P4:P7 in Table 4. For instance, if there are 14 bikes in location 1 at
T = 1, which is 4 more than the ideal 10, then there is a cost of 0.8 to move 4 bikes away
from location 1, each incurring a cost of 0.2.

All prices and costs are in SGD.

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Provide the formula and value for:

 Individual revenue (G11 in Table 2),
 Revenue per time step (I11 in Table 5),
 Cost per time step (J11 in Table 5) and
 Profit per time step (K11 in Table 5).

Cell Answer Marks

G11
0.5
(Formula)

G11
0.25
(Value)

I11
0.5
(Formula)

I11
0.25
(Value)

J11
0.5
(Formula)

J11
0.25
(Value)

K11
0.5
(Formula)

K11
0.25
(Value)

How do you calculate expected profit (averaged over 100 trials)? Can you use the expected
number of remaining bikes that were calculated in part C? If yes, how do you use it? If no,
then why not and how do you then compute expected profit? You need to provide a final
value for the expected profit averaged over 100 trials.

Brief Description Marks

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E. To reduce errant parking, the rental value whenever a bike is moved to location 4 is
increased to 3.5 (given in cells M4, M5 and M6)(please note that J7, K7 and L7 remain at
2 when customers rent a bike from location 4 to locations 1, 2 and 3).

Let us assume that this increase in rental value reduces the “chance of renting a bike”
(Column E of Table 2) to 0.45 for any location to location 4. That is to say, E13, E16 and
E19 all are reduced to 0.45 from 0.5.

Due to the increase in rental value, there may be unhappiness at the bike sharing
company and let us also assume that the chance of renting a bike between other
locations also reduces to 0.85 (from 0.9).

Is increasing rental value for moving to location 4 a better option (with respect to
expected profit over 100 trials) than not increasing the rental value for moving to
location 4? Provide the expected profit value for the case when rental value is increased
and describe the procedure.

If increasing rental value for moving to location 4 is a better option, at what values of
“chance of renting a bike” does it become a worse option?

Answer Marks
Expected profit when rental value is
0.5
increased

Chance of renting bike from any

0.25
location to location 4

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Chance of renting from any location

0.25
to any other location (except 4)

Brief Description Marks

END OF EXAM PAPER

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