Foundational
Business Statistics
This course provides a comprehensive overview of statistics for business. This course provides the foundation for the analysis of stochastic elements business. This course aims to develop basic understanding about the data, their representation, analysis, and the underlying principles such as probability and statistics for solving the business problems.
Course ID: BSMS1203
Course Credits: 4
Course Type: Foundational
Pre-requisites: None
Course structure & Assessments
For details of standard course structure and assessments, visit Academics page.
| WEEK 1 | Introduction to statistics for business: illustrative cases, introduction to descriptive statistics and business applications |
| WEEK 2 | Types of variables and scales of measurements, their applications, the relevance of central tendency and dispersion |
| WEEK 3 | Role of probability distributions in business, from data to probability |
| WEEK 4 | Probability: Marginal, conditional, and joint probabilities |
| WEEK 5 | Random variables: discrete and continuous random variables, their applications in business |
| WEEK 6 | Association between random variables: joint distributions, covariance, and correlations with applications from business |
| WEEK 7 | Probability models for counts, normal probability model, business applications |
| WEEK 8 | Introduction to inferential statistics: central limit theorem and point estimation |
| WEEK 9 | Sampling: methods, distributions, and use cases in business |
| WEEK 10 | Confidence intervals: confidence interval for mean, interpreting confidence interval, margin of error, business application, confidence interval for the difference. |
| WEEK 11 | Statistical tests: hypothesis testing, testing the proportion, testing the mean, properties of the tests |
| WEEK 12 | Regression models: linear regression model, conditions, regression diagnostics, analysis of variance |
Prescribed Books
The following are the suggested books for the course:
Statistics for Business: Decision Making and Analysis, Robert E. Stine, Dean Foster, Pearson, Third Edition.
Statistics for Managers, David M Levine, David F Stephan, Kathryn A Szabat, Pearson, Eighth Edition.
Statistics for Business and Economics, Paul Newbold, William Carlson, Betty Thorne, Pearson, Tenth Edition
About the Instructors
Rahul R Marathe is a Associate Professor at IIT Madras in the Department of Management Studies. He obtained his Ph. D and M.S from Iowa State University in Industrial Engineering and Statistics, and his B.E in Production Engineering from Mumbai University.