ISQS 5345-003 - STATISTICAL CONCEPTS FOR BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT-Fall 2008

Instructor: W. J. Conover. Textbook: Practical Business Statistics, Fifth Edition, by A. F. Siegel, ISBN 0-07-249905-2, with a CD inside the back cover ISBN 0-07282125-6. First class: October 16.Class time: 5:40-8:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday in LH-007; Office hours: MW 2-4 in BA 603, and other times by appointment. Phone 742-1546 (call anytime); E-mail: jay. conover@ttu.edu

Note: This course is on your computer. Go to WEBCT.TLTC.TTU.EDU, log in using your eRaider user ID and password, and you should find this course listed under your name. Let me know if you have problems and I will try to solve them.

You will need your own computer, or at least have access to a computer. Obtain a copy of Microsoft Office from the ATLC in the basement of the library. This is free to all students (part of your tuition) but you have to pay a small fee for a CD to put it on. Or you can download it free from the internet by logging in to the eraider website eraider.ttu.edu, and choosing “manage your account”, but this may take time. Ask IT Help Central 742-HELP (742-4357) for assistance if you are having problems.

I expect most of your homework to be computer printout, using Microsoft Word or Excel. Homework that is hand written will be assumed to have been done in class, which is OK, but it is not HOMEwork.

Laptop computers must remain closed during class, including during exams. Too many students have been using their computers during class to surf the internet or read their emails. I am not a computer guru, but I will be happy to do what I can to help you understand how to use your computer, if you bring it to my office, BA 603. Also, please do not send or receive text messages in class unless you are in an emergency situation.

You also need your own copy of the textbook, listed above. It has a CD that you may want to download onto your computer. The CD contains an Excel Guide, an add-on to Excel called StatPad that we will be using in this course, all the data sets that are given or referred to in the textbook, PowerPoint slides summarizing the chapters, and other useful information. If your copy of the textbook is missing the CD, you will need to borrow one from a friend and download it to your computer, or we may be able to use WebCT to make some of this material available.

Reading assignments (such as "Chapter 1") will involve chapters from the textbook and the corresponding chapters from the Excel Guide on your CD. You should read until you understand the material, but you don't need to memorize the material. The assigned homework is due each Tuesday so you have the weekend to work on it, and time to meet with your assigned team for Case studies. If you can work the assigned Problems and Database Exercises, you probably have a sufficient understanding of the material. The problems assigned are all of the Self-Test Problems (with answers in Appendix C, pp. 787-800) at the end of each chapter to test your comprehension. The assigned Database Exercises are listed below in this syllabus. Unannounced pop-quizzes will be given. They will be closed book quizzes, and will be similar to the assigned problems and database exercises, after we have gone over them in class.

If you are nervous about this course, you may want to take advantage of several helpful features of the textbook. I suggest the following study plan:

1. Go over the PowerPoint slides for the chapter you are about to study. They are on your CD, and on WebCT with my voice-over in most cases. My voice-over has been known to cure insomnia.

2. Read the chapter THREE times. The first reading is just turning the pages to get an overview, which should take two or three minutes total. The second reading is more careful, reading the English and skipping over the Mathematics to get the overall motivation for the chapter material. This will take about one minute per page. The third reading involves going back to the parts you skipped over in the second reading, to try to understand the mathematics in the chapter.

3. Read the Summary at the end of the chapter. There should be no surprises at this point, but you may pick up some information that you missed while reading the chapter. Learn the key words (the ones in boldface) because they will be part of my vocabulary in class, and they should become part of yours.

4. Answer the Questions at the end of the chapter. If you can answer all or most of them you have a good grasp of the material in the chapter. Then you are ready to do the assigned problems.

THIS STUDY PLAN TAKES TIME, BUT IT WORKS! If you don’t have the time, then good luck.

The assignments involving cases will be done in teams of five or six students. If you have a preference for a teammate (like a roommate or close friend) please email your preference to me before noon Tuesday October 21, when I will be forming the teams. I will introduce a case on one class day, and expect your team to file a report with me the following Tuesday at the beginning of class. Your case report will be one to three pages long including graphs and data, typed, with a simple title at the top of page 1, followed by the names of the team members who participated in the work. It will be directed to me, assuming I understand the essentials of the case, so you don't have to explain the case in your report, only your solution to the questions asked at the end of each case. Each of your team members should keep a copy of your case report for purposes of class discussion, and all team members should be able to discuss the findings of the team.

The assignments involving Problems or Database Exercises from the textbook will be done individually by each student. You may work in groups for this if you want to, but each student will hand in his or her own homework. The announced exams will be open book, open notes exams. The problems on the exams will be similar to the Problems at the ends of the chapters in the textbook, or the worked-out examples in the textbook. Your grade will be determined on the basis of 400 possible points. Each of the two exams counts 100 points, your Homework and Class Participation counts 100 points (this includes all Case Reports), and the pop quizzes count 100 points. If you score more than 100 points on the pop quizzes, you will get full credit for your total score (i.e., extra credit).

Any students with learning disabilities, or requiring special assistance, should let me know so that I can make special arrangements for you.

Thursday October 16: You should have a textbook, and the CD that goes with the textbook. You should be able to log into WebCT. You should have access to a computer with Microsoft Word and Excel loaded on it. You should have loaded StatPad on it, from the CD in your textbook. If your CD doesn’t work, borrow one from a friend. Class begins at 5:40 p.m. in LH007, in the basement under the BA Rotunda. We will take a 10 minute break around 7 p.m. every evening. Class will end by 8:30 p.m.Lecture: Chapters 1 and 2 from the textbook.

NOTE: Expect pop quizzes any time over the material you should have learned. These are True/False or Multiple Choice closed book quizzes worth 10 points each. You cannot “make-up” these exams for any reason. If you are not there, you get zero. Period. Expect more than 10 of these exams, so your total points could exceed 100. These are worth preparing for.

Tuesday October 21: Hand in the Self-test Problems from Chapters 1 and 2, and both of the Database Exercises from Chapter 2. NOTE: You are ALWAYS expected to hand in ALL of the Self-test Problems from the Chapters we have gone over, every Tuesday. The answers to the Self-test Problems can be found in the back of the textbook so you can tell if you are on track. In addition, I will assign some or all of the Database Exercises, which may or may not have answers in the back. I will go over all of the assigned problems in class, and then I will collect the homework, so feel free to make notes on your assignment. This may come in handy during the open book, open notes exams. I will hand all of your work back to you on Thursday. I will let you know which team you are on, so let me know if you have teammate preferences by noon, because I will be forming teams Tuesday afternoon. Teams will work on the Cases together.Lecture: Chapters 3 and 4 from the textbook.

Thursday October 23: Lecture: Chapters 5, 6, and 7 from the textbook.

Tuesday October 28: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-4 from Chapter 3;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-3 from Chapter 4;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1 and 2 from Chapter 5;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-3 from Chapter 6;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-3 from Chapter 7.In addition hand in Case reports (one per team) for the Cases at the ends of Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. These should be no more than three pages long for each case, including graphs and appendices. See the instructions above for more detail.

I will return this homework at the start of the next class on Thursday, but if you want it earlier to study from for the exam you may pick it up any time after 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

Thursday October 30: We will start the class with an exam, open book, open notes, over Chapters 1 through 7, which will be worth up to 100 points. You will have until 7 p.m. to work on it. The regular lecture will begin at 7:10 p.m.Lecture: Chapters 8 and 9 from the textbook.

Tuesday November 4: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-3 from Chapter 8;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1 and 2 from Chapter 9.In addition hand in Case reports (one per team) for the Cases at the ends of Chapters 8 and 9.Lecture: Chapter 10.

Thursday November 6: Lecture: Chapters 11 and 12.

Tuesday November 11: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-7 from Chapter 10;All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-4 from Chapter 11.All of the Self-test Problems, and Database Exercises 1-6 from Chapter 12In addition hand in Case reports (one per team) for the Cases at the ends of Chapters 10, 11, and 12.Note that this is the last of the Cases.

I will return this homework at the start of the next class on Thursday, but if you want it earlier to study from for the exam you may pick it up any time after 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

Thursday November 13: We will start the class with an exam, open book, open notes, over Chapters 8 through 12, which will be worth up to 100 points. You will have until 7 p.m. to work on it. The regular lecture will begin at 7:10 p.m.Lecture: Chapters 13 and 14 from the textbook.

Tuesday November 18: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems, and the Database Exercise on page 615, from Chapter 13;All of the Self-test Problems from Chapter 14.

NOTE: The Database Exercise on page 615 entails a 3 to 5 page report (no more than 5 pages max) summarizing results from previous Database Exercises. I expect a typed, double spaced, report with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar, following the style described in Chapter 13 for reports of this type. This report will be worth 0 to 20 points added onto your quiz total. It must be your own work (no group work allowed here). This will take me at least two weeks to grade and hand back. Be patient.Lecture: Chapters 15 and 16 from the textbook.

Thursday November 20: There will be no class today, because I will be out of town.

Tuesday November 25: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems and the Database Exercise 1 from Chapter 15;All of the Self-test Problems and Database Exercises 1-3 from Chapter 16.Lecture: Chapters 17 and 18 from the textbook.

Thursday November 27: There will be no class today. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Tuesday December 2: Hand in the following individual homework:All of the Self-test Problems and Database Exercises 1 and 2 from Chapter 17;All of the Self-test Problems from Chapter 18.

THIS COMPLETES THE COURSE. You may pick up your homework any time after 2 p.m. Wednesday. THERE IS NO FINAL EXAM. The regular time for final exams, Tuesday December 9 at 7:30 p.m., will be reserved for anyone who missed an earlier exam and needs to make it up. You need to make prior arrangements with me if you are taking a make-up exam.

Prerequisite

The prerequisite for this course is acceptance into any Texas Tech graduate program.

Purpose of This Course

The course examines basic statistical concepts and methods, and their interpretation and application. Statistical packages for the personal computer are used. This course is intended for first-semester MBA students who may or may not have had an undergraduate course in Statistics. Where an undergraduate course emphasizes calculations and the ability to perform statistical hypothesis tests and form confidence intervals, this graduate course teaches all that and more. The “more” is an emphasis on gaining perspective from a managerial viewpoint, on how to spot problems with the data, how to interpret statistical results, and how to use common sense as a check on the statistical analysis.

Key concepts and competencies:

The first third of this course covers the relationship between samples and populations, and between sample statistics and population parameters. Several different ways of displaying data, using graphs and using summary statistics, are discussed and compared, so that complex data sets can be presented in ways that are easy to understand by the general population. Also covered is the concept of probability, in its various forms as marginal probability, joint probability, conditional probability, and subjective probability. Various discrete and continuous distributions are introduced, such as the binomial, hypergeometric, normal, uniform, and exponential, as time permits.

The second third of this course introduces statistical inference, in its two forms of estimation and hypothesis testing. Point estimates and interval estimates are introduced. Classical hypothesis testing is covered, with the null hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis, the decision rule, the type one error, level of significance, the type two error, power, and the p-value. Frameworks for the data include the one-sample case, the case of paired data, and the case of two independent samples. Careful attention is paid to the assumptions of the model, and nonparametric methods are introduced for the case of non-normality of the population. Also included are the powerful model-building tools of regression and correlation. Simple linear regression is introduced to illustrate the forms of inference and assumptions utilized in regression. Multiple regression is used to predict values of one variable, where that variable is related to several other variables that are easier to observe. The general linear model is used, along with dummy variables to represent qualitative data, and squared terms to represent non-linear relationships. Residual plots are studied to see of the assumptions of the general linear model are met, so that confidence intervals and hypothesis tests can be conducted on the parameters of the regression model.

The final third of this course presents time series analysis, and the one-way and two-way analysis of variance. Their relationship with the general linear model is illustrated. Nonparametric methods, including the analysis of data in contingency tables, is also covered. The course concludes with an introduction to Control Charts.

Ethical and Legal Issues:

Throughout the course ethical and legal issues involved in the collection, presentation, and analysis of data will be mentioned. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. The proprietary nature of data collected from companies and from private individuals shall at all times be given the utmost consideration.2. Personal or proprietary data shall not be disseminated to parties other than the ones agreed to when the data are collected, unless express permission is given by the original owners of the data.3. Statistical methods, including graphs, summary statistics, point estimates, interval estimates, hypothesis tests, etc., shall not be used to distort the nature of the information contained in the data. Only the most honest, straight-forward results shall be promulgated using statistical methods. "Statistics don't lie, people do."4. Always present "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Expected Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course students should be able to:

1. Present data summaries using graphs appropriate to the points being emphasized, both roughly drawn by hand, and professionally drawn using the computer.2. Summarize data with appropriate sample statistics, computed by hand and by computer in simple cases, or only by computer with extensive data sets.3. Identify data as univariate, bivariate, or multivariate, as qualitative (nominal or ordinal) or quantitative (discrete or continuous), and recognize which statistical methods can be used with each.4. Compute probabilities and parameters from probability models such as the Binomial, Normal, and Uniform.5. Identify the parameter(s) of interest in a statistical application, and determine how to analyze the data relative to that parameter, using hypothesis tests and confidence intervals.6. Estimate unknown quantities using related variables, using regression analysis.7. Make intelligent oral and written presentations of data sets, using appropriate statistical analyses.8. Study a case, or an exercise, and determine the important issues and how to resolve them.9. Work in groups to achieve common objectives, making material contributions to the group, and making objective evaluations of the contributions of others.

Methods for Assessing the Expected Learning Outcomes for the Course

The expected learning outcomes for the course will be assessed through two open-book exams, frequent closed-book pop quizzes, daily written assignments, classroom discussions, and presentations of case analyses.