Statistics in Business

Priscilla Suero

Statistics in Business

University of Phoenix - QNT 351

November 19th, 2012

Introduction

What is statistics? Statistics is “the science of collecting, organizing, presenting, analyzing, and interpreting data to assist in making more effective decisions” (Lind, Marchal & Wathen, 2011, p. 5). Statistics is commonly used in marketing procedures that involves the development of strategies to creating an effective marketing plan. In business, the collection of data is vital for the ability to make decisions and implement processes and policies within a business’ external and internal elements.

Types and Levels of Statistics

The term “statistics” is usually used in a general format but there are two categories the study of statistics is divided into. They are descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics are “methods of organizing, summarizing, and presenting data in an informative way” (Lind, Marchal & Wathen, 2011, p. 6). This means that this form of statistics may use tables, graphs and summary measures to depict the descriptive statistical data. Therefore, inferential statistics are “methods used to estimate a property of a population on the basis of a sample” (Lind, Marchal & Wathen, 2011, p. 7). Aside from the two key types of statistics, there are different levels of measurement within statistics. These four levels of measurements include nominal data, ordinal data, interval data and ratio data. Within each level, the survey used to obtain feedback will transform the results in various formats. Therefore not all measurement levels are used by researchers. The measurement levels are chosen based on the purpose of the study and the analytical process used in generating the statistics.

Role of Statistics

Statistics serves a critical role in the decision-making procedure process of a business. This type of research will allow for researchers and businesses to use statistical thinking in the...