The Practice of Business Statistics: Using Data for Decisions

It came within a week and was in perfectly good condition! brand new! would definitely buy from this seller again!

Thanks for the book! Really cheap and in great condition! I got this book for... a couple bucks! and somebody was trying to sell it to me for $80!!!

I teach a college course in basic statistics at least once a year and for some time have used the book "The Basic Practice of Statistics" by one of the authors of this one. I have no intention of switching to this book, but I did examine it with the idea of determining if it would be appropriate for a course in basic statistics for business. My conclusion is affirmative; there are a large number of worked examples that are applications of business scenarios. The discussions are clear, concise and there are a large number of associated diagrams, which are essential to the learning of statistics. I strongly recommend this book for courses in basic business statistics.

While the authors of texts in basic statistics always claim to the contrary, there is a repetitive sameness to the books. Decades ago, general agreement was reached as to what topics should be covered in the class. Although the advances in technology have made performing computations much easier, that has not led to significant differences in content. Therefore, the only factor that differentiates texts is the style of writing and the focus and quality of the applications. This book is advertised as being focused on how statistics is used in business, and the authors are effectively consistent in using examples applied to business. Their worked examples are almost exclusively taken from business settings and are appropriate for the current topic. The exercises follow the same pattern, they are numerous and answers to the odd-numbered ones are included in an appendix. The style of writing is at the right level for the introductory student. Another unique feature of the book is that it is the core for a total package that has seven additional supplementary chapters. These chapters are: *) Statistics for Quality: Control and Capability. *) Time Series Forecasting. *) One-Way Analysis of Variance. *) Two-Way Analysis of Variance. *) Nonparametric Tests. *) Logistic Regression. *) Bootstrapping Methods and Permutation Tests. The supplements are separate from the core book, if you are interested in using one of the supplementary chapters, you need buy only the ones you need. This is very sensible, as the core material is generally enough to fill any semester class. Since the statistics course that I teach is for students from all backgrounds, I will not be adopting this text for the class. However, if it was focused on the business student, I would.

I thought this book sufficed, but wasn't fabulous. I strongly preferred Moore and McCabe's "Introduction to the Practice of Statistics" to this book, although it didn't have a business slant to it. Moore and McCabe are certainly the way to go, though, for stats, if you have a choice at all.