When we went on Tour: Developing Exam Skills: Analysis

I love using analogies to explain business concepts to students and one which I used on the recent tutor2u revision conferences was comparing good analysis to a necklace.

Basically, analysis is about showing a chain of argument. Therefore, the more links in the chain, the better the argument. A poor quality necklace might have one or two links in it, whilst a good necklace will have far more.

Take this example.

Analyse the ways in which Business X can reduce its break even point.

Many students will simply say that in order to reduce the break even point, the business needs to reduce its costs, for example, variable costs. This is poor analysis as it only has one link.

A far better answer would use connectives to develop the chain of argument: for example…

‘the business can reduce its break even point by reducing its variable costs. In turn this would increase contribution. This means that every item sold would contribute more to paying off the fixed costs. Therefore, the business needs to sell fewer items to cover the fixed costs which in turn reduces the break even point.

Here, we can see that the ‘necklace’, has far more links in it. Simples….