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 4, you should read through the following material in this textbook:
Chapter 13: Linear Regression and Correlation
Sections 13.4, 13.5, and 13.6 only
These sections introduce multivariate or multiple linear regression analysis. These sections also explain some of the problems that can occur in regression analysis.
You are now familiar with several tools in the Analysis Toolpak. Regression analysis is just another one of those tools. Please review the following tutorial for help in generating regression estimates in Excel:
https://www.excel-easy.com/examples/regression.html
Optional Sources
Center for Creative Leadership Website. (2015) Retrieved from http://www.ccl.org/index.shtml
McNamara, C. (2017) All about Leadership. In Free Management Library. Retrieved from http://managementhelp.org/leadership/
• Do some research on recent trends in business analytics such as Google Analytics, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and so on.
• Focus on one trend and discuss its relevancy to your business or any business you would like to discuss.
• Consider how these analytics tools would impact business decision making.
Provide a 300 word discussion post to the question. Be sure to include references to any resources you used. You should use at least one resource to help you with your initial discussion.
Sample Solution
