Practical Business Statistics

Part 1 Introduction and descriptive statistics: introduction - defining the role of statistics in business; data structures - classifying the various types of data sets; histograms - looking at the distribution of the data; landmark summaries - interpreting typical values and percentiles; variability - dealing with diversity. Part 2 Probability: probability - understanding random situations; random variables - working with uncertain numbers. Part 3 Statistical inference: random sampling - planning ahead for data gathering; confidence intervals - admitting that estimates are not exact; hypothesis testing - deciding between realtiy and coincidence. Part 4 Regression and time series: correlation and regression - measuring and predicting relationships; multiple regression - predicting one factor from several others; report writing - communicating the results of a multiple regression; time series - understanding changes over time. Part 5 Methods and applications: ANOVA - testing for differences among many samples and much more; nonparametrics - testing with ordinal data or non-normal distributions; chi-squared analysis - testing for patterns in qualitative data; quality control - recognizing and managing variation. Appendices: employee database; self-test - solutions to selected problems and database exercises; statistical tables.