1.1 What Is Business Statistics?

Business statistics is a set of tools (otherwise known as methods) you can use to help you describe your current data (descriptive statistics), make estimates about the group your data are from (inferential statistics), and make decisions (reach conclusions).

For example, if we wanted to know how many and which customers come in during the week, we could either try to describe the customers who actually came in last week (descriptive statistics) or try to predict, based on past customers, the kind who will come in this next week (inferential statistics). With this information, we can decide how we want to position our products, improve our customer base, or make other changes in our business.

A statistician can assist business managers in determining appropriate methods for sampling, describing data, and making inferences. Similarly, as a business leader, you may want to perform statistical analytics yourself as you help your business, so it's vital that you understand statistics as you'll often need to make decisions based on them, even if the analyses are performed by someone else. This book will show you how to do all of these things.