Dr. Sarah's Lab 3 - Stock Market and Homer Tax Homework DUE at the Beginning of Lab (You will need to have completed this homework in order to be successful in lab.)

NAME_________________________________ Circle Class   9:30 or 11:00
Open up a web browser and go to the main class web page   http://www.mathsci.appstate.edu/~sjg/class/1010   and then click on this homework. Be careful to answer all questions beginning with a bold dot and to follow directions very carefully.

        Finding Stocks with Appalachian in the Name There is a lot of information available on the web, and we will learn effective web searching techniques in order to satisfy part of the computer designator on the course. These effective web searching techniques will be extremely important and useful in and outside this course, so be sure that you understand them.
Type in or click on http://finance.yahoo.com/l (that last letter is the letter "l" not the number 1) Type Appalachian and then hit Search so that yahoo can return stocks which have Appalachian in the name. Click on AJB (Appalachian Power Company). Scroll down. While there is some information listed, there is no profile which describes the company.
To find out more info, type in or click on http://www.google.com Under Search for: Type in the following exactly as you see it:
Appalachian
  • How many web pages of links does this search find? (Look at the part that says something similar to Results 1-10 of about ___ and copy down the number to the right of "about".)



    This is too many pages, many not relevant, and so scroll down to the bottom to the Next Search.
    Now search with:
    +"Appalachian Power Company"     +AJB
    Quotes tell the search engine to find pages with that phrase in it, while + is used to tell it to find that word in it. The + goes just before the work and there is a space between one word or phrase and the next + Hit the Search Button.
  • How many documents did we find matching our query?



    Notice that changing the words made a big difference in our searches. This is too few pages, which contain very little actual info in them.
    Next search with:
    +"Appalachian Power"     +AJB
    (notice that I took off the word "company")
  • How many web pages does this search bring up now?



  • From your google search results, click on the link that says
    QuantumOnline.com - Database Search Results
    ... Appalachian Power Co. 7.20% Redeem Senior Notes due 2038 Symbol: AJB
    CUSIP: 037735792 Exchange: NYSE SECURITY DESCRIPTION: Appalachian ...
  • Under the Company's Online Information Links section, click on Goto Online Profile
  • Write down the description of the company. Notice that the abbreviation listed is different than the stock market abbreviation. This happens sometimes, which makes searching more challenging.















    The point of this exercise is to show that a small difference in wording can make a big difference in searching, to show that sometimes creative searching is needed to find reasonable info on the web, and to give you the tools needed to do advanced searches on your own. You are responsible for learning the advanced searching techniques.

            Finding a Stock to "Buy" and Track Search for 5 stocks that you are interested in "buying" and tracking. You must pick stocks that are actively traded day-to-day, something other than NITE (which I will track) and it must be a stock with a name containing 1,2, 3 or 4 letters only (ie A, AB, ABC, or ABCD). Something.blah is NOT ALLOWED, and neither are longer names nor names containing symbols other than letters. Here are a couple of other places to look for stocks
    finance.yahoo.com/l to search for stocks with certain names (note that the search features are not very user friendly)    (that last letter is the letter "l" not the number 1)
    www.google.com You could search for +"stock symbol" +"COMPANY NAME", where COMPANY NAME is the name of the company that you are interested in.
    finance.yahoo.com
  • What are your 5 stock symbols names - the 4 or less letters - AND the names of the companies?











  • Skim pages 121-128 in the How Do You Know? book to gain some familiarity with personal investments and stock information.
  • Read this web reading - intro to the market (click on the link from the main page to the hw and then scroll down to this spot to click on this link).

          Homer's Paycheck Info
  • From www.google.com, use effective searching techniques learned in the stock market intro hw to try and find a web page containing Homer's full paycheck info (this must include Gross Pay, Net Pay, AND FICA). Recall that an effective search above was
    +"Appalachian Power"   +AJB
    where quotes tell the search engine to find pages with that phrase in it, while +word is used to tell it to find that word in it. Some additional suggestions:
    1. Note that if you search with
      +Homer   +Simpson*
      then you come up with way too many web page links to click on, so you need more effective searching. The * after Simpson so that it will return pages with Simpson, Simpsons, or Simpson's in them. I.e. Simpson* in a search directs the engine to find pages with anything after Simpson. The point of you searching yourself instead of having me just tell you is for you to improve your web searching skills (which will only happen with lots of practice for different searches).
    2. Once you have found promising website links, then you can click on a link to go to that page. It would take a long time if we had to read through entire web pages to find info we want. There is a better way:
      Searching within a web page Under EDIT, go to FIND..., type in one word you want to find in a web page.
      Searching within an adobe acrobat .pdf file If the file is a .pdf file, then Edit/Find won't work. But, just above the page itself, look for the BINOCULARS, and click on them. Then type in the word you want to find in the page (for example, paycheck or gross pay) and then click on FIND.
  • Write down Homer's complete paycheck information (this must include Gross Pay, Net Pay, AND FICA).








  • Write down the web address of the web page that contained Homer's paycheck.



  • Write down the exact searching words (+blah +"something else"...) that enabled you to find the web page by searching in www.google.com



  • Write down the word that you used to find the paycheck within the web page or adobe file (#2 above).