本書是久負盛名的統計學教學用書，在國外大學中得到廣泛采用。本書涵蓋了應用統計學在當代商務經濟領域中幾乎所有的重要應用，並且將統計軟件（包括Excel，SPSS，Minitab）的使用貫穿全書。第7版除了保留上一版的特色外，還具有以下特點：
1．深入淺出地講解了統計學對經驗管理和不斷創新的重要意義。書中的大量課堂教學實例涉及會計、金融、管理、營銷等公司經營管理的各個領域，可以使讀者理解和掌握如何運用統計學原理和方法來解決現實世界的經營管理問題。
2．側重對統計結果的理解。統計學家喬治?伯克斯的名言“所有模型都是錯誤的，但有些是有用的”，講的就是數學模型都是在特定假設下建立的。而現實問題通常難以完全滿足模型的假設條件，這就需要讀者通過學習深入探索數據背後的規律。
3．提供了大量電子表格形式的數據集，並且在講授教學案例時提供了一些簡便易學的統計軟件計算結果。
本書在過去十年中數次修訂的一個主要原因就是為了跟上計算機軟件和互聯網技術發展的步伐。本書提供的大量實例、練習使課程極富實用性，能幫助讀者快速掌握統計軟件。

戴維?萊文?(David?M.?Levine)? 紐約城市大學巴魯克學院傑克林商學院統計與計算機信息繫統繫榮譽退休教授。在巴魯克學院多年的教學生涯中，為教學和課程開發做出了突出的貢獻，獲得教學獎。
凱瑟琳?賽貝特?(Kathryn?A.?Szabat) ?拉薩爾大學商業繫統與分析繫教授，美國統計協會（ASA）成員，?賓夕法尼亞大學沃頓商學院統計學博士。
戴維?斯蒂芬?(David?F.?Stephan) Two?Bridges教育技術大學教授，?早期計算機教學倡導者，幫助重新開發了CIS課程。

Getting Started: Important Things to Learn First
1 Defining and Collecting Data
2 Organizing and Visualizing Variables
3 Numerical Descriptive Measures
4 Basic Probability
5 Discrete Probability Distributions
6 The Normal Distribution
7 Sampling Distributions
8 Confidence Interval Estimation
9 Fundamentals of Hypothesis Testing: One-Sample Tests
10 Two-Sample Tests and One-Way ANOVA
11 Chi-Square Tests
12 Simple Linear Regression
13 Multiple Regression

When writing for introductory business statistics students, we are guided by these principles:
Help students see the relevance of statistics to their own careers by providing examples drawn from the functional areas in which they may be specializing. Students need to learn statistics in the context of the functional areas of business. We present each statistics topic in the context of areas such as accounting, finance, management, and marketing and explain the application of specific methods to business activities.
Emphasize interpretation and analysis of statistical results over calculation. We emphasize the interpretation of results, the evaluation of the assumptions, and the discussion of what should be done if the assumptions are violated. We believe that these activities are more important and will serve students better in the future than focusing on tedious hand calculations.
Give students ample practice in understanding how to apply statistics to business. We believe that both classroom examples and homework exercises should involve actual or realistic data, using small and large sets of data, to the extent possible.
Familiarize students with the use of spreadsheet and statistical software. We integrate spreadsheet and statistical software into all statistics topics to illustrate how this software assists business decision making. (Using software in this way also supports our second point about emphasizing interpretation over calculation).
Provide clear instructions to students for using spreadsheet and statistical software. We believe that providing such instructions facilitates learning and helps prevent minimizes the chance that learning software to the level necessary will distract from the learning of statistical concepts.