A statistical or financial calculator would be helpful in this course. If you already own a statistical or financial calculator, be sure and bring it to class along with your manual so we can work through the calculations together. Many courses, including finance and business policies, tend to use this model. As we approach the next millenium, the issue facing managers is not a shortage of information but how to use the available information to make better decisions. Managers need an understanding of statistics in order to properly present and describe information, to know how to draw conclusions about large populations based only on information obtained from samples, to know how to improve processes, and to know how to obtain reliable forecasts.
Statistical analysis is also very important in every aspect of business.
Accountants use statistical methods to select samples for auditing purposes and to understand the cost drivers in cost accounting. Finance uses statistical methods to choose between alternative portfolio investments and to track trends in financial measures over time. Management uses statistics to improve the quality of products manufactured or the services delivered by an organization. Marketing uses statistics to estimate the proportion of customers who prefer one product to another and to draw conclusions about what advertising strategy might be the most useful to increase profit margins. By the end of this course, students should have a basic understanding of how to interpret descriptive and inferential statistical variables and apply them to ordinary business applications.