Essentials of Business Statistics and Student CD-ROM [Paperback]

James R. Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 6, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0130784214 | ISBN-13: 978-0130784216

This concise text covers the basic concepts of business statistics and data analysis in a contemporary spreadsheet environment. The author emphasizes practical applications of the approaches to business decision making. Some of the text highlights include: *Concise approach-This book integrates fundamental concepts of business statistics and decision-making in eight chapters. The author takes a practical, nonmathematical approach. *Practical applications-A comprehensive database, using marketing, finance, and production data, is used throughout the text to give students hands-on experience in analyzing data for practical decisions. *Spreadsheet emphasis-The emphasis is on using spreadsheets for data analysis and decision modeling. The book features Excel and the Excel add-ins: PHStat and the student edition of Crystal Ball Professional 2000. About the CD-ROM EVERY NEW COPY OF THIS TEXTBOOK IS PACKAGED WITH A CD-ROM CONTAINING SOFTWARE ESSENTIAL FOR THIS COURSE: *PHStat2-Spreadsheet add-in for statistics *Crystal Ball-Spreadsheet add-in for simulation and risk analysis This free CD-ROM also contains all of the Excel files required for many of the examples in this text.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This concise text covers the basic concepts of business statistics and data analysis in a contemporary spreadsheet environment. The author emphasizes practical applications of the approaches to business decision making. Some of the text highlights include:

• Concise approach—This book integrates fundamental concepts of business statistics and decision-making in eight chapters. The author takes a practical, nonmathematical approach.
• Practical applications—A comprehensive database, using marketing, finance, and production data, is used throughout the text to give students hands-on experience in analyzing data for practical decisions.
• Spreadsheet emphasis—The emphasis is on using spreadsheets for data analysis and decision modeling. The book features Excel and the Excel add-ins: PHStat and the student edition of Crystal Ball Professional 2000.

About the CD-ROM

EVERY NEW COPY OF THIS TEXTBOOK IS PACKAGED WITH A CD-ROM CONTAINING SOFTWARE ESSENTIAL FOR THIS COURSE:

• PHStat2—Spreadsheet add-in for statistics
• Crystal Ball—Spreadsheet add-in for simulation and risk analysis

This free CD-ROM also contains all of the Excel files required for many of the examples in this text.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In recent years, we have seen a rather significant trend in business schools as Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet add-ins have become the principal tool for applications of quantitative methods. Essentials of Business Statistics is written to meet the need for an introductory text that provides a basic introduction to business statistics, focusing on practical applications of data analysis. To support this purpose, I have integrated fundamental theory and practical applications in a spreadsheet environment. Spreadsheet add-ins, specifically PHStat—a collection of statistical tools that enhance the capabilities of Excel, published by Prentice-Hall, and the student version of Crystal Ball (including CB Predictor for forecasting) are used for additional analysis capability.

Among the features provided in this book are:

1. A complete coverage of important statistical topics, aligned with the capabilities of PHStat2,
2. An assortment of data sets for both illustrative examples and problems,
3. Many problems and exercises from a variety of disciplines, and
4. Exercises and case problems at the end of each chapter.

The book consists of eight chapters.

• Chapter 1, Data and Business Decisions, describes the importance of, and types of data used in, business decision making. This chapter also provides the foundation for working with Excel and other add-ins, and introduces some fundamental concepts of measurement and sample data, basic Excel skills, including PivotTables.
• Chapter 2, Displaying and Summarizing Data, focuses on data visualization and descriptive statistics.
• Chapter 3, Random Variables and Probability Distributions, introduces basic concepts of probability and probability distributions, random sampling, sampling distributions, and sampling error. Crystal Ball is introduced and used as a tool for simulating sampling distributions to gain insight into their nature.
• Chapter 4, Sampling and Statistical Inference, addresses sampling methods, statistical analysis of sample data, estimation, and hypothesis testing. It also provides an introduction to analysis of variance and distribution fitting using Crystal Ball.
• Chapter 5, Regression Analysis, introduces fundamental concepts and methods of both single and multiple regression.
• Chapter 6, Forecasting, discusses both qualitative and quantitative forecasting methods. These include statistical time series models and applications of regression analysis to forecasting. The topics are arranged to facilitate the use of CBPredictor as an Excel-based tool.
• Chapter 7, Statistical Quality Control, develops some applications of statistical concepts presented in the previous chapters to the design and use of control charts and process capability studies.
• Chapter 8, Risk Analysis and Monte Carlo Simulation, introduces Monte Carlo Simulation and its applications to risk analysis.

Throughout the book I have placed "Notes" for Excel, PHStat, and Crystal Ball that provide procedural details of using specific functions, tools, or techniques. These provide key information for the student to apply the tools, but do not disrupt from the flow of the discussion. The CD-ROM accompanying this book contains all the data and model files used throughout the book, PHStat, and the student version of Crystal Ball.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (August 6, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130784214
• ISBN-13: 978-0130784216
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,575,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)