06 Feb For Module 1, you should read through

Module 1 – Background

EXCEL, DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS, AND VISUAL DISPLAYS

Required Reading

Statistics are all around you, sometimes used well, sometimes not. We must learn how to distinguish the two cases. Just as important as detecting the deceptive use of statistics is the appreciation of the proper use of statistics. You must also learn to recognize statistical evidence that supports a stated conclusion. When a research team is testing a new treatment for a disease, statistics allows them to conclude based on a relatively small trial that there is good evidence their drug is effective. Therefore, it is important to understand statistics. In this course, you would reform your statistical habits from now on. No longer will you blindly accept numbers or findings. Instead, you will begin to think about the numbers, their sources, and most importantly, the procedures used to generate them. In this way, you can become a more rational decision maker by analyzing the past performance to make business planning.

Statistics are often presented in an effort to add credibility to an argument or advice. You can see this by paying attention to television advertisements. Many of the numbers thrown about in this way do not represent careful statistical analysis. They can be misleading, and push you into decisions that you might find cause to regret. If you cannot distinguish good from faulty reasoning, then you are vulnerable to manipulation and to decisions that are not in your best interest. Statistics provides tools that you need in order to react intelligently to information you hear or read. In this sense, statistics is one of the most important things that you can study. For these reasons, learning about statistics is essential to business intelligence. This course will help you refresh some statistical essentials that are related to business analytics and decision making.

The primary resource for this module is Introductory Business Statistics, by Alexander, Illowsky, and Dean.

Alexander, H., Illowsky, B., & Dean, S. (2017). Introductory Business Statistics. Openstax. Retrieved from https://openstax.org/details/books/introductory-business-statistics

For Module 1, you should read through the following material in this textbook:

Chapter 1: Sampling and Data

This chapter provides a general overview of statistics, data terminology, and sampling techniques.

Chapter 2: Descriptive Statistics

This chapter explains measures of central tendency, including mean, median, and mode. It also carefully discusses statistics that measure variation, including variance and standard deviation and covers important concepts such as skewness.

As mentioned in the overview, it is very important that you become comfortable with Microsoft Excel. This course, along with many others in the graduate program, uses Excel extensively. It is also very likely that you will use Excel in the workplace. Below are important videos that will help you get started with some of the basics.

If you have never used Excel before, you will benefit from working through these tutorials:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-for-windows-training-9bc05390-e94c-46af-a5b3-d7c22f6990bb

If you have used Excel before and are comfortable with entering data and working with the dropdown menus, you can start by ensuring you have the Analysis Toolpak add-in, which will allow you to quickly generate many of the statistics we will discuss during this course:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/load-the-analysis-toolpak-in-excel-6a63e598-cd6d-42e3-9317-6b40ba1a66b4

Once the Analysis Toolpak is added, you will be working with the Descriptive Statistics tool. Please read through the following instructions for help in using this feature:

https://www.excel-easy.com/examples/descriptive-statistics.html