Practical Business StatisticsSixth Edition

by Andrew F. Siegel

Published by Elsevier / Academic Press

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

Why did I Write this Book?

• For the students! • To make statistical methods more accessible

to them by using many real data examples• Student motivation is everything (almost)• My goal: to make statistics as simple as

possible without sacrificing technical correctness

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

My Academic Background

• Now at University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and Statistics Department

• Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford while studying both theory and data analysis

• Also: University of Wisconsin and Harvard• Worked with John Tukey at Princeton (he

created exploratory data analysis)• Published extensively in statistics,

biotechnology, and finance

My Business Background

• Shoveling snow as a child• Consultant in advertising, portfolios,

biotechnology, elections, and manufacturing• Serve on a corporate board• Maintain a sole proprietorship• Helps me understand why business people

need probability and statistics!

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

General Themes

• Lots of examples!– Real business data from finance, accounting,

advertising, ...

• Writing style: how to think about a topic, how it works, what it implies, how it is useful– Traditional methods and new insights

• Extra material to help the student– Chapter summaries, key words, glossary,

extensive index, PowerPoint slides, Excel Guide

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

Histograms and Bar ChartsTo help students distinguish thehistogram from the simple bar chart, for the data here is the examplefrom page 39 of the Histograms Chapter(Chapter 3) which also mentions theadvantage of the histogram for largerdata sets.

Histogram, Box Plot, and CDFTo compare and contrast these threebasic exploratory charts, here is the example from page 83 of Chapter 4 on Landmark Summaries.

Probability TreesProbability is less mysterious to students when there is a visual framework, as shown here in the example from page 144 of Chapter 6.

PowerPoint Slides for Your Teaching

PowerPoint Slides for Your Teaching

PowerPoint Slides for Your Teaching

Hypothesis TestingHypothesis testing is more intuitive when the confidence interval method is used (as shown here from pages 253-254 of Chapter 10). The traditional t-statistic is also presented in detail.

Bivariate Data ExamplesRelationships and regression are powerful business concepts. Here are a couple of the examples from Chapter 11 on Bivariate Data (pages 295 and 308).

Magazine Ads and Multiple RegressionThe cost of advertising can be explained, in part, by magazine characteristics such as audience size and income level in this example that is used to illustrate the power of multiple regression in business, from Chapter 12.

Excel GuideThe Excel Guide goes step-by-step through, chapter by chapter, to show students how Excel can be used to obtain statistical results. Here is the scatterplot example from page 82 of the Excel Guide.

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

Chapter Projects

• The project, in most chapters, gives students a chance to apply the lesson to a business area of their own choosing.

• Data might come from the Internet or from their own company

• Helps with motivation • Helps with communications skills

The Writing Chapter (Chapter 13)

• Explains how to communicate– the results of a multiple regression

• In business, analysis is not enough.– The ability to communicate is a key skill!

• The writing process is explained step-by-step– with a full example of a sample report

• The chapter project might be used as the end-of-semester assignment

Outline

• Why I chose to write this book• My background• General themes• Selected examples• Chapter projects and the writing chapter• Conclusion and Summary

Conclusion and Summary

• A book that helps and motivates students:– Many real business examples with illustrations– Clear, direct explanations of how and why• Intuition, methods, and foundations

– Extra resources:• Chapter summaries, key words, glossary, extensive index• Questions, problems, database exercises, cases, projects• PowerPoint slides, Excel Guide, and Instructor’s Manual

Thank you!Wishing you a successful teaching experience,

Practical Business Statistics, Sixth Edition,

Andrew F. Siegel (Andy) and Elsevier, Inc.