Business 90, Business Statistics                                                                         Spring 2005

 

Mari Yetimyan

Office:  BT757 Office Phone:  (408) 924-3444     Fax:  (408) 924-3445

E-mail:  yetimyan_m@cob.sjsu.edu      Web Page:  www.cob.sjsu.edu/yetimy_m

Office Hours:  MW 1:30-2:45 p.m. and 5:45-6:15 p.m     R 10:00-11:30 a.m.

 

Class Schedule:

Section 3        Code 20500       MW  3:00-4:15 p.m.        BBC 103

Section 10      Code 28914       MW  4:30-5:45 p.m.        BBC 003

                                                                       

Course description:  In terms of theory and application:  collection and presentation of data; measures of central tendency and spread; probability as a measure of uncertainty; sampling distributions; estimation and hypothesis testing; regression and correlation.     

 

The course does NOT meet GE Math Concepts requirement

Prerequisite:  Math 70 and Bus 91L or equivalents

 

Course objectives:  Develop thorough grounding and practical knowledge of the fundamental concepts and tools of statistical data analysis.  Emphasis will be on understanding/interpretation rather than memorization and manipulation of formulas. 

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

  1. Summarize data in an informative way.
  2. Interpret data analysis performed by others.
  3. Understand the use of probability to formulate uncertainty and its application to risk analysis.
  4. Make smart decisions in face of uncertainty using statistical tools. 
  5. Understand simple forecasting techniques that exploit relationship among attributes.

 

Course outline:  The course material can be divided roughly into three parts.  The first part focuses on Descriptive Statistics.  It introduces graphical and numerical methods for summarizing and presenting data in a way that illustrates important features of the data.  This part of the course is purely deterministic; there is no notion of uncertainty.  The challenge here is to start using Excel.  Excel is essential for the last part of the course where hand computations would be too time-consuming to focus your attention on the  interpretation of the meaning of the quantities calculated by Excel. 

 

In the second part of the course, we study making decisions under uncertainty and introduce the concepts of probability, estimation and hypothesis testing.  Probability is the tool that we use to express uncertainty.  We introduce probability in an intuitive way and make it concrete with real-life business examples from risk management, quality control, etc.  Then we study statistical inference-estimation and hypothesis testing.  These are fundamental building blocks that one encounters in every situation where sample data are used to draw conclusions about a large population.

 

The last part of the course is dedicated to the study of modeling relations among attributes through regression analysis-again, a basic model for exploiting associations to strengthen inference.

 

Important Dates

Monday, January 26                          First day of instruction

Monday, February 14                        Last day to drop or withdraw without a “W” grade  

Monday, March 28-Friday, April 1   Spring break-no classes              

Tuesday, May 17                              Last day of instruction

 

Adds/Drops:  You are responsible for all University deadlines for adding and dropping.  As of Tuesday, February 15, dropping the class approved only for serious and compelling reason with valid, verifiable documentation.

 

Text:  Levine, Stephan, Krehbiel, Berenson, Statistics for Managers Using Microsoft Excel, 4th ed., Prentice Hall, 2005.  (ISBN:  0-13-144054-3)

Optional Excel to be purchased at the bookstore.

Software:  Microsoft Excel—also available on CoB lab terminals on the third floor.

 

Tentative Course Outline

Chapter  1     Introduction and Data Collection

Chapter  2     Presenting Data in Tables and Charts

Chapter  3     Numerical Descriptive Measures

Chapter  4     Basic Probability

Chapter  5     Some Important Discrete Probability Distributions

Chapter 16     Decision Making

Chapter  6     The Normal Distribution and Other Continuous Distributions

Chapter  7     Confidence Interval Estimation

Chapter  8     Fundamentals of Hypothesis Testing: One-Sample Tests

Chapter 12     Simple Linear Regression

 

Homework and quizzes:  Homework is assigned for each chapter and, with the exception of Excel related work (there will be three), homework will not be turned in for grading.  Some problems may be reviewed in class; others may be discussed during office hours.  It is essential that you keep up with the work as the material is presented in class.  Quizzes covering the assigned homework problems will be given in class.  There will be approximately nine quizzes.  The two lowest scores will be dropped from the evaluation.

 

A list of homework problems (subject to change) will be distributed in class. 

 

Evaluation:  Evaluation will be based on the following criteria.  However, positive attitude about the course could improve the cumulative score of any student.

     Three exams                             20% each

     Comprehensive final exam       30%

     Quizzes and homework            10%  (10 points each)

 

Roughly, the breakdown for the semester grades will be:

90-100  A      80-89.9  B      70-79.9  C      60-69.9  D      Below 60  F

Plus (+) and minus (-) designation for grades will be indicated in class.

 

A make-up exam will be allowed for a serious reason and with prior notification.  And, you must have appropriate documentation.  Ten points will be deducted from the make-up exam score.  Only one make-up exam and no make-up quizzes are allowed.

 

Academic dishonesty, in any form, will not be tolerated.