Practical Business Statistics

Practical Business Statistics, Sixth Edition, is a conceptual , realistic, and matter-of-fact approach to managerial statistics that carefully maintains, but does not overemphasize, mathematical correctness. The book offers a deep understanding of how to learn from data and how to deal with uncertainty while promoting the use of practical computer applications. This teaches present and future managers how to use and understand statistics without an overdose of technical detail, enabling them to better understand the concepts at hand and to interpret results. The text uses excellent examples with real world data relating to the functional areas within Business such as finance, accounting, and marketing. It is well written and designed to help students gain a solid understanding of fundamental statistical principles without bogging them down with excess mathematical details.

This edition features many examples and problems that have been updated with more recent data sets, and continues to use the ever-changing Internet as a data source. Supplemental materials include companion website with datasets and software.

Each chapter begins with an overview, showing why the subject is important to business, and ends with a comprehensive summary, with key words, questions, problems, database exercises, projects, and cases in most chapters.

This text is written for the introductory business/management statistics course offered for undergraduate students or Quantitative Methods in Management/ Analytics for Managers at the MBA level.

User-friendly, lively writing styleSeparate writing chapter aids instructors in teaching how to explain quantitative analysisOver 200 carefully-drawn charts and graphs show how to visualize dataData mining is a theme that appears in many chapters, often featuring a large database (included on the website) of characteristics of 20,000 potential donors to a worthy cause and the amount actually given in response to a mailingMany of the examples and problems in the sixth edition have been updated with more recent data sets, and the ever-changing Internet continues to be featured as a data sourceEach chapter begins with an overview, showing why the subject is important to business, and ends with a comprehensive summary, with key words, questions, problems, database exercises, projects, and cases in most chaptersAll details are technically accurate (Professor Siegel has a PhD in Statistics from Stanford University and has given presentations on exploratory data analysis with its creator) while the book concentrates on the understanding and use of statistics by managersFeatures that have worked well for students and instructors in the first five editions have been retained

1. Introduction: Defining the Role of Statistics in Business 2. Data Structures: Classifying the Various Types of Data Sets 3. Histograms: Looking at the Distribution of Data 4. Landmark Summaries: Interpreting Typical Values and Percentiles 5. Variability: Dealing with Diversity 6. Probability: Understanding Random Situations 7. Random Variables: Working with Uncertain Numbers 8. Random Sampling: Planning Ahead for Data Gathering 9. Confidence Intervals: Admitting that Estimates are not Exact 10. Hypothesis Testing: Deciding Between Reality and Coincidence 11. Correlation and Regression: Measuring and Predicting Relationships 12. Multiple Regression: Predicting One Factor from Several Others 13. Report Writing: Communicating the Results of a Multiple Regression 14. Time Series: Understanding Changes Over Time 15. Anova: Testing for Differences Among Many Samples, and Much More 16. Nonparametrics: Testing with Ordinal Data or Nonnormal Distributions 17. Chi-Squared Analysis: Testing for Patterns in Qualitative Data 18. Quality Control: Recognizing and Managing Variation App A. Employee Database App B. Donations Database App C. Self-Test: Solutions to Selected Problems and Database Exercises App D. Statistical Tables App E. Statpad Quick Reference Guide