Business statistics for contemporary, 6th ed.

Abstract

The sixth edition of Business Statistics for Contemporary Decision Making continues the rich tradition of using clear and complete, student-friendly pedagogy to present and explain business statistics topics. With the sixth edition, the author and Wiley continue to expand the vast ancillary resources available through WileyPLUS with which to complement the text in helping instructors effectively deliver this subject matter and assisting students in their learning. The resources available to both the instructor and the student through WileyPLUS have greatly expanded since the fifth edition was launched; and because of this, an effort has been made in the sixth edition to more fully integrate the text with WileyPLUS. In the spirit of continuous quality improvement, several changes have been made in the text to help students construct their knowledge of the big picture of statistics, provide assistance as needed, and afford more opportunities to practice statistical skills. In the fifth edition, the 19 chapters were organized into four units to facilitate student understanding of the bigger view of statistics. In the sixth edition, these same 19 chapters have been organized into five units so that chapters could be grouped into smaller clusters. The nonparametric and the analysis of categorical data chapters have been moved further toward the back of the text so that the regression chapters can be presented earlier. The decision trees that were introduced in the fifth edition to provide the student with a taxonomy of inferential techniques have been improved and expanded in the sixth edition. Nonparametric inferential techniques have been separated from other inferential techniques and given their own decision tree. This has simplified the decision trees for parametric techniques and made the decision trees easier for students to decipher. Further integration of the text with WileyPLUS is addressed through icons that are used throughout the text to designate to the reader that a WileyPLUS feature is available for assistance on a particular topic. The number of databases associated with the text has been expanded from seven to nine, and one of the fifth edition databases has been replaced, thereby bringing the total of new databases in the sixth edition to three. All of the features of the fifth edition have been retained, updated, and changed as needed to reflect today’s business world in the sixth edition. One Decision Dilemma has been replaced, and nine new Statistics in Business Today features have been added. In the sixth edition, as with the fifth edition, there are 17 high-quality video tutorials with the author explaining key difficult topics and demonstrating how to work problems from challenging sections of the text. This edition is written and designed for a two-semester introductory undergraduate business statistics course or an MBA-level introductory course. In addition, with 19 chapters, the sixth edition lends itself nicely to adaptation for a one-semester introductory business statistics course. The text is written with the assumption that the student has a college algebra mathematical background. No calculus is used in the presentation of material in the text. An underlying philosophical approach to the text is that every statistical tool presented in the book has some business application. While the text contains statistical rigor, it is written so that the student can readily see that the proper application of statistics in the business world goes hand-in-hand with good decision making. In this edition, statistics are presented as a means for converting data into useful information that can be used to assist the business decision maker in making more thoughtful, information-based decisions. Thus, the text presents business statistics as “value added” tools in the process of converting data into useful information.