Synopses & Reviews
Providing an introduction to modern data analysis techniques, these casebooks can be used as the primary or secondary text for elementary business statistics courses. Statistics has the reputation of being a boring, complicated, and confusing mix of mathematical formulas accompanied by computers used to do something. This casebook nad its companion volume Business Analysis Usuing Regression change that impression by showing how statistics gives insights and ansswers interesting business questions. The material is organized into classes of related case studies that develop a single key idea of statistics. The authors begin by discussing an application that motivates the key idea. Students are then shown how to analyze a data set. The emphasis of the analysis is to answer important business questions with statistics rather than talk about statistics. Basic Business Statistics introduces ideas often not emphasized in elementary texts such as issues of robustness, the use of transformations to simplify problems, sampling bias, confounding, kernel density, quality control, and scatterplot matrices. Business Analysis with Regression includes a discussion of scatterplot smoothing, prediction intervals for new observations, collinearity, logistic regression, nonlinear models, and multiple comparisons in regression. The text includes directions for data analyses with JMP and an appendix with Minitab commands. Professors Dean P. Foster, Robert A. Stine, and Richard P. Waterman are members of the Department of Statistics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. "The manuscripts are divided into "classes" which tackle various statistical concepts. Material becomes increasingly complex as the data in later sections exhibit multiple deviations from ideal conditions. The casebooks use a combination of explanatory text and software output to guide the student. Almost no mathematics appears in these volumes; the authors make traditional texts available to their students who are curious about the technical details...I anticipate students will wholeheartedly endorse the FSW casebooks. The material is easy to digest as, for instance, the authors cleverly interweave probability, the standard error of the mean, and control charts. The casebooks effectively relay the message that statistics is relevant and doable. Ideally, that is the message that should be sent in all introductory business statistics courses." Marlene Smith, University of Colorado-Denver
Review
"The manuscripts are divided into "classes" which tackle various statistical concepts. Material becomes increasingly complex as the data in later sections exhibit multiple deviations from ideal conditions. The casebooks use a combination of explanatory text and software output to guide the student. Almost no mathematics appears in these volumes; the authors make traditional texts available to their students who are curious about the technical details...I anticipate students will wholeheartedly endorse the FSW casebooks. The material is easy to digest as, for instance, the authors cleverly interweave probability, the standard error of the mean, and control charts. The casebooks effectively relay the message that statistics is relevant and doable. Ideally, that is the message that should be sent in all introductory business statistics courses." Marlene Smith, University of Colorado-Denver
Synopsis
This book introduces business students to modern techniques of data analysis, and provides them with the commands necessary to analyze data in the statistical packages JMP and Minitab.
Synopsis
Preface Statistics is seldom the most eagerly anticipated course of a business student. It typically has the reputation of being a boring, complicated, and confusing mix of mathematical formulas and computers. Our goal in writing this casebook and the companion volume (Business Analysis Using Regression) was to change that impression by showing how statistics yields insights and answers interesting business questions. Rather than dwell on underlying formulas, we show how to use statistics to answer questions. Each case study begins with a business question and concludes with an answer to that question. Formulas appear only as needed to address the questions, and we focus on the insights into the problem provided by the mathematics. The mathematics serves a purpose. The material in this casebook is organized into 11 "classes" of related case studies that develop a single, key idea of statistics. The analysis of data using statistics is seldom very straightforward, and each analysis has many nuances. Part of the appeal of statistics is this richness, this blending of substantive theories and mathematics. For newcomers, however, this blend is too rich, and they are easily overwhelmed and unable to sort out the important ideas from nuances. Although later cases in these notes suggest this complexity, we do not begin that way.
Synopsis
This book provides a set of case studies that can supplement any business statistics text. Developed at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, it is used for the beginning statistics course for MBA students. The casebook provides the latest in data analysis techniques, and includes a discussion of JMP and Minitab commands.
Table of Contents
Overview and Foundations * Statistical Summaries of Data * Sources of Variation * Standard Error * Confidence Intervals * Sampling * Making Decisions * Designing Tests for Better Comparisons * Confounding Effects in Tests: A Case Study * Covariance, Correlation, and Portfolios * A Preview of Regression