Statistical Inference in Business

Course Syllabus

Information
Course
Fall, 2013.
•Web Page: http://www.nd.edu/~bizstat (This site is also displayed in Sakai.)
•Where: Room L051 Mendoza College of Business.
•When: 11:00 to 12:15 (Section 1) or 12:30 to 1:45 (Section 2) Mondays and Wednesdays.

Professor
Ken Kelley, Ph.D.
•Email Address: [email protected]
•Office Hours: Monday & Wednesdays 2:00 – 4:00, by appointment, and anytime my door is open.
•Office Location: 363B Mendoza College of Business.
•Office Phone Number: (574) 631-1459.
•Mobile Phone Number: (574) 607-5478 (text messages are fine).

Teaching Assistants
Katherine Puziol ([email protected]) and Kevin Schneider [email protected]
•Office Hours: Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, 7:00–8:30 PM and by appointment.
•Office Location: L051 Mendoza College of Business.

Description
Statistical Inference in Business builds on Statistics for Business and Economics (or equivalent)
and focuses on making inferences about population quantities from sample data via hypothesis
testing and confidence intervals. Statistical Inference in Business applies statistical methods in
a business context in order to address business related questions and help make evidence based
decisions. In Statistical Inference in Business, you will learn to apply commonly used statistical
methods in business contexts and how to interpret analyses performed by others.

Objectives
The overarching objective of Statistical Inference in Business is for students to gain an
understanding of how to use data to address business decisions and processes. The specific course
objectives are to:
• perform the appropriate statistical analyses based on the business question and the type of
data;

• interpret the results of statistical analyses;

• make inferences about the population from sample data;

• apply inferential statistics to make evidence based business decisions.

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 Required Textbook & Software
Textbook
Anderson, Sweeney, Williams, Camm, & Cochran. (2014). Statistics for Business and Economics
(12th Edition). South-Western: Mason, OH.

Alternatively, the 10th, 11th, or the 11th Revised edition of Statistics for Business and Economics
can be used. Neither the CD-ROM or on-line passcode is necessary.
Statistics for Business and Economics presents the numerous processes involved in making evidence
based, real-world business decisions in a well-written and comprehensible way. The book is written
from a conceptual point of view and focuses on the meaning of the numbers, not derivations
or mathematical proofs. This approach to statistical education is endorsed by the American
Statistical Association and their Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education
(i.e., the GAISE Report: http://www.amstat.org/education/gaise/GaiseCollege_Full.pdf).
Statistics for Business and Economics is part of the most widely used business statistics series that
I know of and is highly regarded in the field.
Software
We will use IBM SPSS Statistics and Microsoft Excel to implement many of the statistical methods.
Microsoft Word is required for all of the assignments. Correspondingly, access to SPSS, Excel, and
Word is required.

Electronic Devices
The classroom is a computer classroom. Only at designated times may the classroom computers be
used. Mobile phones, tablets, MP3 players, laptop computers, et cetera, are not allowed to be used
in the classroom.

Course Notes
I will provide a note packet for each of the topics. However, the course is much more than simply
a set of note packets. Correspondingly, they should not be regarded as all that is necessary to
understand the course material and implement the various statistical methods.

Attendance
Attendance is required. If a University approved excuse is provided, the student may make-up any
missed work. When a University approved excuse is provided for a day when an assignment is due
or an exam or quiz administered, the student must turn in or make-up the quiz or exam prior to
the next class meeting (or before the absence).

Participation
Students are required to work on in-class assignments and actively participate during class, which
necessarily requires attendance. Your time in class will be more enjoyable and productive if you
participate fully in activities, discussions, and ask as well as answer questions. Topics discussed in
class will be the basis for many questions on homework, quizzes, and exams. Correspondingly, it is
important to attend class and participate in classroom activities.

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 Assignments
There will be an assignment for most topics. Assignments are due electronically before class
via Sakai one week following the topic completion. For problems with an incorrect final
answer, partial credit may be rewarded only if the preceding work is clearly documented and the
error identified. Homework assignments require Word, with any SPSS or Excel output
(e. g., calculations, figures, and/or tables) inserted (via copy and paste) into the Word
document. The assignment component of the course grade will be weighted according to the total
number of possible points. Assignments, along with the assignment’s due date, will be posted on
the course web site (http://www.nd.edu/~bizstat). Late assignments will receive a 10% penalty
for every 24 hour period they are late, starting immediately after assignments should have been
turned in (i.e., before class on the designated day). The assignment component will count 25%
toward the course grade. As discussed more below, assignments are potentially collaborative.

Quizzes
Students are required to take a quiz on most Wednesdays of the semester. The quiz component of
the course grade will be weighted according to the number of possible quiz points. The quizzes will
involve answering conceptual questions, implementing statistical methods (by hand and computer),
and interpreting the results of statistical methods. The quiz component will count 15% toward the
course grade. The quiz that most negatively affects the quiz component of the course grade will
not be counted. Note that the quiz questions are similar to exam questions.

Special Needs
Please let me know if you have any special needs that should be addressed at the beginning of the
semester. We can work together so that any special needs you have are met.

Examinations
There is a midterm and a final exam. Examinations are based on the lectures, readings, assignments,
in-class exercises, quizzes, Excel, and SPSS. The format of the examinations is varied with multiple
choice, fill-in, short answer, and calculation based questions. Students are allowed to use a help
sheet that is one standard (8 12 × 11) piece of paper with handwritten notes on each side for the
exams. The help sheet for a specific exam may contain handwritten notes, equations, definitional
terms, worked examples, et cetera, but no material may be printed or attached to the help sheet.
Each help sheet will be handed in with the exams. Standard calculators are required. The final
exam is semi-cumulative, in the sense that the course material continues to build on itself and will
apply differently in new situations. However, the vast majority of the final is specific to the second
part of the course. The midterm and final exam will each count for 30% of the final grade (i.e.,
60% of the total course grade).

Getting Help
Help is regularly available! The teaching assistants and I will do whatever we can to help you you
master the material. Statistics, more than many other subjects, is cumulative in nature, in which
the material continues to build on previous material. The last topic, for example, combines various
aspects of almost everything else discussed in the course. That being said, if you are not sure that
you understand the material completely, please seek help early and often. We will meet with you
whenever possible.
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 Collaboration
Students may work together on assignments, with up to three students per assignment. Additionally,
students are encouraged to discuss classroom topics, course notes, handouts, readings, previous
quizzes, and assignments in small groups. Discussing course materials generally leads to better
success for all who take part in the discussion, provided that all parties are actively engaged in the
conversation. For collaboration on the assignments, it is best if each student does the assignment
and then meets with the group. If, for example, students assign different questions to different
group members, each group member may only learn about a specific type of problem or application,
whereas the full scope of the assignment’s topics needs to be understood. Thus, the idea of “divide
and conquer” is not a good strategy, as students will not be exposed to the multidimensional types
of problems that an entire assignment will contain. Thus, it is best for each student to work on
each problem before meeting as a group.

Grading
As noted above, grading for Statistical Inference in Business will be based on assignments (20%),
quizzes (15%), a midterm exam (30%), and a final exam (20%). The equation that governs the
numeric course grade is thus

Grade = .25Assignments + .15Quizzes + .30M idterm + .30F inal.

However, in any given semester the above scale may be adjusted. The target GPA across my sections
for the course, as with all BAMG courses, is 3.2–3.4, which is a Department of Management grading
policy. Note that because of the way in which the numeric scale maps onto the ordinal grades, there
is no rounding of numeric grades when determining the letter grade.

Course Schedule

Date Topic(s) Topical Reading(s)

•Review Foundations
•Introduction to Course •Review Probability
•8/28
•Course Expectations •Review Descriptives
•Review Normal Distributions
•Introduction to SPSS
•9/2 •Browse SPSS :A Brief Guide
•SPSS Laboratory

•Point Estimation
•9/4 •Sampling Distributions •Sections 7.1–7.5
•The Sampling Distribution of the Sample Mean
•Interval Estimation for a Population Mean
(σ known)
•9/9 •Sections 8.1–8.2
•Interval Estimation for a Population Mean
(σ unknown)

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 •Rationale of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing
•9/11 •Hypothesis Testing for a Population Mean •Sections 9.1–9.3
(σ known)
•HypothesisTesting for a Population Mean
•9/16 •Section 9.4
(σ unknown)

•9/18 •Inference for Paired Means •Section 10.3

•9/23 •Inference for Independent Means •Sections 10.1–10.2

•9/25 •Inference for Independent Means (Continued) •Sections 10.1–10.2

•Inference for a Single Variance

•9/30 •Sections 11.1–11.2
•Inference for Two Variances

•Correlation
•10/2 •Section 3.5
•Issues of Causality

•Correlation (Continued)
•10/7 •Properties of Estimators •Section 7.7–7.8
•Types of Sampling Methods

•Topical Wrap-up
•10/9 •Prepare Questions
•Review for Midterm Exam

•Bring Calculator
•10/14 •Exam 1 (Exam will be during class.)
•Bring Help Sheet

•Review of Exam 1
•10/16 •Business Analytics •Readings
•Big Data, Data Mining, Predictive Analytics

•10/21
•Fall Break!
•10/23

•10/28 •Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) •Sections 13.1–13.2

•10/30 •Multiple Comparisons in ANOVA •Sections 13.3

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•11/4 •Factorial ANOVA •Section 13.5

•11/6 •Simple Regression •Sections 14.1–14.9

•11/11 •Multiple Regression •Sections 15.1–15.8

•11/13 •Multiple Regression (Continued) •Sections 15.1–15.8

•11/18 •Multiple Regression: Model Building •Sections 16.1–16.6

•11/20 •Multiple Regression: Model Building •Sections 16.1–16.6

•Inference for Proportions •Sections 8.4 & 9.5

•11/25
•Inference for the Difference Between Proportions •Sections 11.1 & 11.3

•11/27 •Thanksgiving Break!

•Chi-Square Tests for k Proportions

•12/2 •Sections 12.1–12.2
•Chi-Square Test of Independence

•12/4 •Chi-Square Goodness of Fit •Section 12.3

•Section 1.7
•12/9 •Ethics, Data, and Data Ethics
•Ethics Readings

•Topical Wrap-up
•12/11 •Review for Final Exam •Prepare Review Questions
•Homework Q & A

•Exam 3
•Bring Calculator
•12/17 •7:30-9:30 PM
•Bring Help Sheet
•Location will be announced.

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 Academic Honesty
Students in Statistical Inference in in Business are expected to abide by the University of Notre
Dame Honor Code for all matters relating to the course. Recall that the University’s Honor Code
states “as a member of the Notre Dame community, I will not participate in or tolerate academic
dishonesty.”

Syllabus Disclaimer
The information provided on this syllabus is tentative and may be modified. Modifications to the
syllabus will be announced during class.