Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Advanced Business Statistics
Decision Science 591
Spring 1999
Instructor: Dr. Ananish Chaudhuri
Class Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays
4:15 – 5:30 PM
This is a WHETS class going to Yakima and Wenatchee
Suggested Text: Statistics for Management and Economics by Mendenhall, Reinmuth and Beaver, Seventh Edition, Duxbury Publishers.
We will possibly be relying mostly on MS-Excel as far as Statistical software is concerned. However there are a wide variety of other software that is available such as SPSS or Execustat. Minitab etc. Most of these have Student Versions available. If you have access to any of these or wish to use any of these feel free to discuss it with me. The textbook comes with a disk containing data. The Student Edition of Execustat is available to students using this text. You may consider getting a copy for yourself.
Contact Information: Office: CIC 125J
Phone: 372-7238
E-mail: achaudh@tricity.wsu.edu
Website: http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/~achaudh
Office Hours: Open (I am usually in my office during the day on weekdays. All you need to do if you wish to see me is to give me a call or send me a mail to tell me what time you want to come by. Also I will be in my office before class – feel free to stop by at that time. I am not averse to making appointments on weekends either)
Course Description and Objectives:
Statistics plays a key role in making a variety of business problems. Consider the example of an automobile dealership that has complete records of the prices at which its cars have been sold. Understanding and using all this information may be difficult if one is presented with a complete list of prices. Some summary of this information – perhaps broken up by model of car, months of the year, or sales representative – would be more useful. Or for example, auditing the inventory of a large hospital would be time consuming and costly. Instead of counting and pricing the thousands of items in stock, the auditor can select a sample of items from the complete inventory. The values of these items in stock can be compared with the values shown in the hospital’s records, and an estimate can be constructed of the of the ratio between the total value of supplies on hand to those shown in the hospital’s records.
These situations and many similar ones illustrate the need to examine and summarize data and to use these summaries to predict, estimate, and ultimately, make business decisions. Our emphasis on this course will be to show the applicability of statistics in analyzing business problems.
Determination of Course Grade
20% - Midterm exam
20% - Final exam
10% on each of SIX (6) homework assignments – adding up to 60%
The mid-term and Final exams will possibly be in-class. I will tell you the exact format later.
A TENTATIVE schedule of homework assignments and exams is the following: (Please understand that we may have to make alterations in the schedule depending on the exigencies of the situation. I will apprise of any such changes early and will make mutually acceptable changes only)
Every homework assignment will be handed out on a Thursday and will be due back the following Tuesday. (The homework assignments will be available on-line on my web-page. Follow the link for Decision Sciences 591). All the homework problems will be assigned from the textbook for the course.
Homework 1: January 21 due back January 26
Homework 2: February 4 due back February 9
Homework 3: February 18 due back February 23
MID-TERM: March 11 (In-class)
Homework 4: March 18 due back March 23
Homework 5: April 1 due back April 6
Homework 6: April 15 due back April 20
FINAL: TO BE ANNOUNCED (according to the schedule of exams)
Academic Honesty:
Please familiarize yourself with the University’s guideline on academic honesty. However I am confident that this will not be an issue.
Class and Text Reading Schedule:
Please not that this is an outline of topics I wish to cover - I may not cover all of them - and I may not cover them in the order listed here. It is VERY IMPORTANT to keep yourself informed of what is going on in the class at a particular time.
Chapter 2: Describing Sets of Measurement
Chapter 3: Probability
Chapter 4: Random Variables and Probability Distributions
Chapter 5: Three Useful Discrete Probability Distributions
Chapter 6: The Normal and Other Continuous Probability Distributions
Chapter 7: Sampling and Sampling Distributions
Chapter 8: Large Sample Estimation
Chapter 9: Large Sample Tests of Hypotheses
Chapter 10: Inferences from Small Samples
Chapter 12: Linear Regression and Correlation
Chapter 13: Multiple Linear Regression
Chapter 19: Nonparametric Statistical Methods
Chapter 14: Elements of Time Series Analysis
Again, it is important to bear in mind that this is an outline that we will try to adhere to. Also parts of each class will be spent on discussing problems that I will assign from time to time or in answering questions.
It is very important that you keep up with the material and take part in class discussions. I want this to be a semester long dialogue between us. Please feel free to ask questions during class and before the lecture starts and/or after it ends.