Quantitative Analysis for Business
Friday, November 30, 2012
What are statistics and why are they important to business? First, statistics provide businesses with quality control and insurance. The information provided by statistical data support business decisions. Statistics are a quantitative technique used in business. This information provides information derived from data in order to support decision making. Second, in business statistics can most readily be seen in sales forecasting, quality control and market research. The data statistics is used for is wide ranging; from population censuses to sales ("Business Statistics", 2011). Statistics is often referred to as a science. There is a data gathering process, analysis process, and a theory developed as a result. Statistics provide a base for all marketing decisions. Without this baseline of information, most businesses would be unaware of what their consumers wanted. There are two types of statistics; descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics are used to group or label a set of data by graphically presenting the information or describing its principal predispositions and how it is circulated. The purpose of descriptive statistics is to summarize a collection of data as a description instead of exhausting the data to study the field wherein the data signifies. Descriptive statistics are constantly used, although most results are discovered with the use of inferential statistics. Inferential statistics deduce information about a population through exhausting information assembled by sampling. These data sets render descriptive statistic meaningless as a result of unpredictable changes in the data. No conclusions can be made about a subject from this data. These conclusions are viewed more as predictions to be used to safeguard concrete actions. The two types of