An Essential Guide to Business Statistics

An Essential Guide to Business Statistics offers a clear and concise introduction for business students studying statistics for the first time. It helps them to become proficient in using statistical techniques and interpreting their results within a business content and will enable them to have a better understanding of customers, decision making and planning for the future. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate business students taking introductory modules in business statistics or quantitative methods. Accompanying the text is a rich supporting website which contains additional teaching and learning materials including slides for each chapter, tutorials in excel, self-test quizzes and student practice projects at varying difficulty levels.

Table of Contents:
Preface ix About the Author xi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Collection 1 Analysis 2 Interpretation 2 Presentation 2 Terminology 2 Using Excel 3 Chapter 2 Data Collection 13 Introduction 13 Terminology 14 Primary and Secondary Data 15 Sampling Methods 15 Data Collection Techniques 23 Understanding Bias 28 Hints and Tips 28 Practice Exercises 29 Solutions to Practice Exercises 35 Chapter 3 Data Distributions 43 Introduction 43 Frequency Distributions 44 Relative Frequency 47 Cumulative Frequency 48 Cumulative Relative Frequency 49 Grouped Frequency Distributions 50 Numerical Class Characteristics 54 Which Distribution? 57 Hints and Tips 58 Practice Exercises 59 Solutions to Practice Exercises 71 Chapter 4 Graphical Representation 85 Introduction 85 Bar Charts 86 Pie Charts 88 Stem and Leaf Diagrams 90 Histograms 93 Time Series Plots 95 Scatter Diagrams 97 Hints and Tips 98 Using Excel 100 Practice Exercises 104 Solutions to Practice Exercises 116 Chapter 5 Measures of Central Tendency 125 Introduction 125 The Mode 126 The Mean 127 The Median 131 Advantages and Disadvantages 134 Which Measure? 135 Hints and Tips 136 Using Excel 137 Practice Exercises 143 Solutions to Practice Exercises 156 Chapter 6 Measures of Dispersion 163 Introduction 163 Range 164 Quartiles and the Interquartile Range 165 Five-Number Summary 167 Box Plots 168 Variance and Standard Deviation 172 Coefficient of Variation 178 Hints and Tips 180 Using Excel 181 Practice Exercises 184 Solutions to Practice Exercises 196 Chapter 7 Correlation 203 Introduction 203 Scatter Diagrams 204 Correlation Coefficient 205 Rank Correlation Coefficient 211 Cause and Effect 212 Hints and Tips 213 Using Excel 213 Practice Exercises 215 Solutions to Practice Exercises 228 Chapter 8 Simple Linear Regression 245 Introduction 245 Independent and Dependent Variables 246 Linear Equations 246 Simple Linear Regression Model 248 Finding the Line of Best Fit 249 Making Predictions 252 Interpolation and Extrapolation 253 Interpretation 253 Hints and Tips 254 Using Excel 256 Practice Exercises 257 Solutions to Practice Exercises 267 Chapter 9 Probability 279 Introduction 280 Terminology 280 Approaches to Probability 281 Basic Properties 284 Probability Model 285 Venn Diagrams 286 Mutually Exclusive Events 287 Independent Events 287 Complement Rule 288 Intersection and Union 289 Addition Rule 290 Conditional Probability 292 Multiplication Rule 293 Hints and Tips 294 Practice Exercises 296 Solutions to Practice Exercises 303 Chapter 10 Introducing Statistical Inference 309 Introduction 309 Random Variables 310 Discrete and Continuous Random Variables 310 Probability Distributions 311 Normal Distribution 313 The Standard Normal Distribution 315 Population Parameters and Sample Statistics 321 Point and Interval Estimates 323 Hints and Tips 326 Practice Exercises 327 Solutions to Practice Exercises 333 Appendix: The Standard Normal Distribution 341 Glossary 345 Index 351

About the Author :
Dawn Willoughby is an award-winning writer and lecturer in statistics at the University of Reading, where she teaches students on a wide range of undergraduate programmes in areas including Business Management, Statistics, Mathematics, Psychology, Information Systems and Computer Science. She is a qualified mathematics teacher with a degree in Statistics and Computer Science and is currently working towards a Master's degree in Education. Dawn has also achieved professional recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.