As recently as a decade ago our students used to ask us， "How do I use statistics? Today we more often hear， "Why should I use statistics?" Applied Statistics in Business and Economics has attempted to provide real meaning to the use of statistics in our world by using real business situations and real data and appealing to your need to know why rather than just how.
With over 50 years of teaching statistics between the two of us， we feel we have something to offer. Seeing how students have changed as the new century unfolds has required us to adapt and seek out better ways of instruction. So we wrote Applied Statistics in Business and Economics to meet four distinct objectives.
Objective 1： Communicate the Metuung of Variation in a Business Context Variation exists everywhere in the world around us. Successful businesses know how to measure variation. They also know how to tell when variation should be responded to and when it should be left alone. We'll show how businesses do this.
Objective 2： Use Real Data and Real Business Applications Examples， case studies， and problems are taken from published research or real applications whenever possible. Hypothetical data are used when it seems the best way to illustrate a concept. You can usually tell the difference by examining the footnotes citing the source.
Objective 3：Incorporate Current Statistical Practices and Offer Practical Advice With the increased reliance on computers， statistics practitioners have changed the way they use statistical tools. We'll show the current practices and explain why they are used the way they are. We also will tell you when each technique should not be used.
Objective 4： Provide More In-Depth Explanation of the Why and Let the Software Take Care of the How It is critical to understand the importance of communicating with data. Today's computer capabilities make it much easier to summarize and display data than ever before. We demonstrate easily mastered software techniques using the common software available. We also spend a great deal of time on the idea that there are risks in decision making and those risks should be quantified and directly considered in every business decision.
Our experience tells us that students want to be given credit for the experience they bring to the college classroom， We have tried to honor this by choosing examples and exercises set in situations that will draw on students' already vast knowledge of the world and knowledge gained from other classes， Emphasis is on thinking about data， choosing appropriate analytic tools， using computers effectively， and recognizing limitations of statistics.
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