Business statistics: A problem-solving approach

This book is an introductory text in statistics for students of business and administration in graduate programs leading to a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, undergraduate programs in colleges and universities, and community and junior colleges. At the MBA or advanced undergraduate level, this text supports an intensive one-term course. At the undergraduate level and in community and junior colleges, the text is suitable for a two-term introductory statistics sequence. This book is about statistics as it is used. The examples and exercises are from actual applications of statistics to business and administration, with few exceptions. The approach to the presentation of these useful quantitative tools is problem-oriented. In developing each concept, realistic business problems are posed and the appropriate statistical tool is then illustrated. This reverses the usual deductive approach which introduces the tool and then finds a problem to illustrate it. The author uses, instead, the inductive approach. Thus, the need for the statistical tool is first established, through the use of real-world problems, and then the theoretical base is developed. This makes the subject matter more meaningful to the student who has been (or will be) faced with the increasing use of such statistical methods in modern business and administrative practice.