Business Statistics: A Decision-Making Approach, 10th edition

Gain an edge in today’s workplace by applying statistical analysis skills to real-world decision-making.

Business Statistics: A Decision Making Approach provides students with an introduction to business statistics and to the analysis skills and techniques needed to make successful real-world business decisions. Written for students of all mathematical skill levels, the authors present concepts in a systematic and ordered way, drawing from their own experience as educators and consultants. Rooted in the theme that data are the starting point, Business Statistics champions the need to use and understand different types of data and data sources to be effective decision makers. This new edition integrates Microsoft Excel throughout as a way to work with statistical concepts and give students a resource that can be used in both their academic and professional careers.

Also available with MyLab Statistics.

MyLab™ Statistics is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.

Also available with MyLab Statistics

MyLab™ Statistics is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.

Empower any student to apply and interpret Statistics procedures, getting to statistical understanding faster

• Videos tie statistics to the real world.

• StatTalk Videos feature fun-loving statistician Andrew Vickers who takes to the streets of Brooklyn, NY, to demonstrate important statistical concepts through interesting stories and real-life events. This series of 24 fun and engaging videos will help students actually understand statistical concepts. Available with an instructor’s user guide and assessment questions.

• Business Insight Videos comprise ten engaging videos that show managers at top companies using statistics in their everyday work. Assignable question encourage discussion.

• Additional Question Libraries: In addition to algorithmically regenerated questions that are aligned with your textbook, MyLab Statistics  courses come with two additional question libraries:

• 450 exercises in Getting Ready for Statistics cover the developmental math topics students need for the course. These can be assigned as a prerequisite to other assignments, if desired.

• Almost 1000 exercises in the Conceptual Question Library require students to apply their statistical understanding.

• StatCrunch™: MyLab Statistics  integrates the web-based statistical software, StatCrunch, within the online assessment platform so that students can easily analyze data sets from exercises and the text. In addition, MyLab Statistics includes access to www.statcrunch.com, a vibrant online community where users can access tens of thousands of shared data sets, create and conduct online surveys, perform complex analyses using the powerful statistical software, and generate compelling reports.

• Tutorial Exercises with Multimedia Learning Aids: The homework and practice exercises in MyLab Statistics align with the exercises in the textbook, and most regenerate algorithmically to give students unlimited opportunity for practice and mastery. Exercises offer immediate helpful feedback, guided solutions, sample problems, animations, videos, statistical software tutorial videos and eText clips for extra help at point-of-use.

• Learning Catalytics™ helps you generate class discussion, customize your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. As a student response tool, Learning Catalytics uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more interactive tasks and thinking.

• Help your students develop critical thinking skills.

• Monitor responses to find out where your students are struggling.

• Rely on real-time data to adjust your teaching strategy.

• Automatically group students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning. 

• NEW! Upload a full PowerPoint® deck for easy creation of slide questions.

• NEW! Team names are no longer case sensitive.

• MyLab Statistics Accessibility: MyLab Statistics is compatible with the JAWS screen reader, and enables multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and free-response problem-types to be read, and interacted with via keyboard controls and math notation input. MyLab Statistics also works with screen enlargers, including ZoomText, MAGic®, and SuperNova. And all MyLab Statistics videos accompanying texts with copyright 2009 and later have closed captioning. More information on this functionality is available at http://mystatlab.com/accessibility.

Support students as they learn to use statistical software, to save valuable class time and prepare them for their future careers--whatever they may be

• NEW! Tech-Specific Video Tutorials are short, topical videos that address how to use varying technologies, including Excel, to complete the work. 

• Excel Tutorials: Customized PowerPoint tutorials for Excel use data sets from the text examples. Students who need additional instruction in Excel can access the menu-driven tutorial, which shows exactly the steps needed to replicate select computer examples in the text.  

• When working exercises that includes a data set, students can export that data easily in a single click, which minimizes their time doing data entry and keeps their focus on solving the problem. 

• EXPANDED! Tech Assumed Questions in MyLab Statistics: Exercises marked with a "-T" assume the use of technology throughout the exercise and accompanying learning aids.

• A "Tech Help" button gives access to Technology Tutorial videos for all MyLab Statistics exercises that  require it. These videos are available for the most popular statistical software.

• Software output screens include displays from StatCrunch, Minitab, TI-83/84, and Excel to illustrate exercises and examples where appropriate.

• Technology Answers are now included where they differ from by-hand computations.

• Users can now copy data from MyLab Statistics exercises straight into Excel. 

Make studying more effective and efficient

• Personalized Learning: Not every student learns the same way or at the same rate. Personalized homework and the companion study plan allows your students to work more efficiently, spending time where they really need to. 

• The Study Plan acts as a tutor, providing personalized recommendations for each of your students based on his or her ability to master the learning objectives in your course. This allows students to focus their study time by pinpointing the precise areas they need to review, and allowing them to use customized practice and learning aids—such as videos, eText, tutorials, and more—to get them back on track. Using the report available in the Gradebook, you can then tailor course lectures to prioritize the content where students need the most support—offering you better insight into classroom and individual performance.

• With Personalized Homework, students take a quiz or test and receive a subsequent homework assignment that is personalized based on their performance. This way, students can focus on just the topics they have not yet mastered.

About this book - Key Pedagogical Features

• Business Applications and decision-making emphasis. New applications are included and are highlighted in the text with special icons, making them easier for students to locate as they use the text. 

• Quick Prep Links at the beginning of the chapter provide several ways to prepare for the topics discussed.

• Chapter Outcomes identify the benefits of completing the following chapter, linked to the corresponding main headings. The chapter outcomes are recalled throughout the text to remind students of the objectives.

• Excel Functions text boxes, located in the text margin next to chapter examples, provide the Excel function that students can use to complete a specific test or calculation. 

• A step-by-step approach emphasizes concise, ordered details to reinforce chapter material. 

• How to Do It lists summarize major techniques and fundamental concepts. Textual examples give step-by-step details, allowing students to easily follow solution techniques. Students can apply the methodology from each example to solve other problems. 

• Textual Examples throughout the text provide step-by-step details, enabling students to easily follow solution techniques. These examples add to the vast array of business applications to give students a competitive edge. 

• Real-World Business Applications feature real companies, actual applications, rich data sets, all to help promote realistic decision making. These applications are motivational, thereby helping students understand the relevance of statistics. They are clearly indicated with special icons and cover areas from accounting and finance to supply chain management. This allows the authors to concentrate on addressing how students apply this statistical knowledge to decision-making.

• Chapter Cases give students the opportunity to apply statistical tools. Each case challenges students to define a problem, determine the appropriate tool to use, apply it, and then write a summary report.

• Special Review Sections provide a review of the key issues and statistical techniques. Highly effective flow diagrams help students decide which technique is appropriate for a given problem or exercise. They serve as a mini-decision support system that reduces the need for memorization and encourages students to seek a deeper understanding and learning. Integrative questions and exercises ask students to demonstrate their comprehension of the topics covered.

• Problems and exercises feature an extensive range of exercises to test the student’s understanding of the text. These are broken down into three categories: 

• Skill Development to expand upon statistical methods learned in the chapter.

• Business Applications involving realistic situations in which students apply decision-making techniques.

• Computer Software Exercises, often with associated data files, are solved using Excel, Minitab, or other statistical software. 

• Computer Integration combines computer applications with textual examples and figures, always focusing on interpreting the output. The goal is to guide students in which tools to use, how to apply the tools, and how to analyze their results for making decisions.

• Microsoft Excel 2016 integration instructs students in how to use the Excel 2016 interface for statistical applications.

• XLSTAT is the Pearson add-in for Microsoft Excel that facilitates using Excel as a statistical analysis tool.

Empower any student to apply and interpret Statistics procedures, getting to statistical understanding faster

• Learning Catalytics™ helps you generate class discussion, customize your lecture, and promote peer-to-peer learning with real-time analytics. As a student response tool, Learning Catalytics uses students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in more interactive tasks and thinking.

• Help your students develop critical thinking skills.

• Monitor responses to find out where your students are struggling.

• Rely on real-time data to adjust your teaching strategy.

• Automatically group students for discussion, teamwork, and peer-to-peer learning. 

• Upload a full PowerPoint® deck for easy creation of slide questions.

• Team names are no longer case sensitive.

Support students as they learn to use statistical software, to save valuable class time and prepare them for their future careers--whatever they may be

• Tech-Specific Video Tutorials are short, topical videos that address how to use varying technologies, including Excel, to complete the work. 

• Tech Assumed Questions in MyLab™ Statistics: Exercises marked with a "-T" assume the use of technology throughout the exercise and accompanying learning aids.

About the Book

• Textual Examples include many new business examples throughout the text provide step-by-step details, enabling students to follow solution techniques easily. These examples are provided in addition to the vast array of business applications to give students a real-world, competitive edge. 

• More Excel 2016 Focus: This edition features Excel 2016 with screen captures used extensively throughout the text to illustrate how this highly regarded software is used as an aid to statistical analysis. 

• Excel 2016 features are highlighted throughout the text, including Statistic Chart, which enables the quick construction of histograms, and box and whisker plots. Forecasting Sheet, a new data feature in Excel, allows for time series forecasting and is applied throughout this edition's forecasting chapter.

• Business Applications have been included to provide students with current examples showing how the statistical techniques introduced in the text are used by real companies. The new applications involve companies, products, and decision-making scenarios that are familiar to and help students understand the relevance of statistics.

• A Business Analytics chapter introduces students to basic business intelligence and business analytics concepts and tools. Students discover how to use Microsoft's Power BI tool to analyze large data sets. Coverage includes loading data files into Power BI, establishing links between large data files, creating new variables and measures, and creating dashboards and reports using the Power BI tool.  

• Exercises and Data Files have been included throughout the text, and other exercises have been revised and updated. Many new data files have been added to correspond to the new Computer Software Exercises, and other data files have been updated with current data. 

• Improved Notation: The notation associated with population and sample proportions has been revised and improved to be consistent with the general approach taken by most faculty who teach the course. 

• Test Manual has been prepared with questions that correspond directly to this new edition.

Also available with MyLab Statistics

MyLab™ Statistics is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them absorb course material and understand difficult concepts.