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.