Applied Statistics for Business and Economics

by: Robert M. Leekley (Author)

Publisher: CRC Press
Edition: 1st

Publication Date: 16 Mar. 2010

Language: English

Print Length: 496 pages

ISBN-10: 1439805687

ISBN-13: 9781439805688

Book Description

Designed for a one-semester course, Applied Statistics for Business and Economics offers students in business and the social sciences an effective introduction to some of the most basic and powerful techniques available for understanding their world. Numerous interesting and important examples reflect real-life situations, stimulating students to think realistically in tackling these problems. Calculations can be performed using any standard spreadsheet package. To help with the examples, the author offers both actual and hypothetical databases on his website http://iwu.edu/~bleekley The text explores ways to describe data and the relationships found in data. It covers basic probability tools, Bayes’ theorem, sampling, estimation, and confidence intervals. The text also discusses hypothesis testing for one and two samples, contingency tables, goodness-of-fit, analysis of variance, and population variances. In addition, the author develops the concepts behind the linear relationship between two numeric variables (simple regression) as well as the potentially nonlinear relationships among more than two variables (multiple regression). The final chapter introduces classical time-series analysis and how it applies to business and economics. This text provides a practical understanding of the value of statistics in the real world. After reading the book, students will be able to summarize data in insightful ways using charts, graphs, and summary statistics as well as make inferences from samples, especially about relationships.
Review While there are numerous texts on the market with the same goal, this text takes a practical and effective approach to engaging students with a topic that, as the author notes, they are most likely not that interested in leaing. The text accomplishes this goal quite well. … It is written in a very straightforward and understandable manner that fits its intended audience quite well. … Given that there are dozens of introductory statistics texts on the market. it has become exceedingly difficult to create one that can be truly differentiated from the rest. However, in this case, the author appears to have succeeded. This is accomplished in large part by taking a down-to-earth, almost intuitive, approach to the material which is both refreshing and welcome. –Tom Page, The American Statistician, August 2011In this excellent textbook Professor Leekley takes the reader, as if they were his students, through every detail of examples, working all steps with great patience. This generous approach is even extended to explaining how mathematical and statistical notation and symbols are read; a very rare and valuable education. … This book is highly recommended as a textbook for business statistics and it can also be used as a manual for self-study.–Joual of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, July 2011For the mathematician, this text does an outstanding job of integrating things on the mathematical level. … This is one of the few texts to try to make plausible the complex formula for two-sample t degrees of freedom when we do not assume the two variances are equal. … [Students] will like the clear and to the point writing.–MAA Reviews, September 2010
About the Author
Robert M. Leekley is a professor in the Department of Economics at Illinois Wesleyan University.