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Analysis of DSSs for Investment Decisions

The questions that follow let you check your understanding of fundamental concepts introduced in Chapters 1-5 by asking you to apply it to comparative analysis of four DSSs for investment decisions. The course instructor will select the four to be used for answering the questions posed in this assignment (e.g., Yahoo, Short Term Stock Selector, Big Charts, Kanamax).

1. Characterize a kind of investment decision that these sites can help support.
a. From the classic view of decision making.
b. From the knowledge-based view.

2. Where do such decisions fall on the structured to unstructured continuum? Briefly explain.

3. For each of the DSSs, give an example of a problem that it can solve for someone making an investment decision.

4. For each of the DSSs, indicate which of the three decision-making phases is supported and briefly describe the nature of that support.

5. For each of the 7 kinds of support cited on page 85 in the DSS book, indicate which of the DSSs provide that kind of support and how they do so.

6. For each DSS, briefly summarize the descriptive knowledge it can provide that could be of utility in making investment decisions.

7. For each DSS, briefly summarize the procedural knowledge that it uses to derive new descriptive knowledge for a user.

8. Some of the DSSs provide stock quotes.: a. What knowledge validity issue arises with this knowledge?
b. Which of the DSSs identified at the book's web site can be used to get a real-time quote for a stock between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at no charge and without having a brokerage account?

9. Referring to Figure 5.3, explain how each of the Web systems fits the knowledge handling profile of a DSS (i.e., acquisition, selection/derivation, presentation).