Introduction to the Course

•  Teaching staff: Assoc.Prof. Tran Thi Bich

Statistics Faculty
BUSINESS STATISTICS Email: [email protected]
•  Lectures: as indicated
Advanced Educational Program •  Tutorials: 30 minutes - 1 hour, from lecture 2 to
10
•  Materials:
-  Statistics for Management and Economics
(9th Edition); Keller.
-  SPSS Statistics 17.0: Guide to Data Analysis

Assessment How to achieve 10% of participation?

•  Participation: 10% •  Attend every lecture

•  Mid-term exams: •  Contribution in class and tutorials
–  One individual in class mid-term exams: 20% •  Compliance with the class rules:
–  One group take-home exam: 20% –  Come prepared – read the readings assigned.
•  Final exams: 50% –  Turn off cell phones during classes.
•  Further details (including date of exams and –  Use laptop only when being indicated
deadline of assignments) given during the –  Do not engage in individual discussions
course. –  No food in class time

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Hints for success Lecture 1

•  Attend lectures and tutorials, supplement given
materials with your own comments and notes. Introduction to Statistics and
•  Work carefully on the tutorials – doing them is how SPSS
you will understand and learn
•  Time spent trying questions is well spent
•  Constantly REFER to notes Reading materials:
•  Use resources provided Chap 1, 2 (Keller)

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 Outline
•  Introduction to statistics
•  Basic concepts: variables and data
•  Getting acquainted with SPSS What is statistics?

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What is statistics? So…

•  This is not a matter of ordering soup! Statistics
involves matters of life and death… •  Statistics is all about collecting, organising and
–  If the probability of getting accident of an airplane if interpreting data
1/10,000, what is your chance of survival when you are
•  Statistics is a way to get information from data and
on board?
make decisions under uncertainty
–  How do you know?
•  To accomplish the above feat, Statisticians rely on •  Statistical analysis of data uses statistical
three related disciplines: modelling and probability: our main focus is on
data and techniques for analysing data
–  Data analysis
–  Probability
–  Statistical inference
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 The question is … Why is statistics important?
•  How to get useful information from data to make a •  Financial management (capital budgeting)
correct decision? It’s not easy! L •  Marketing management (pricing)
•  Marketing research (consumer behaviour)
•  Operations management (inventory)
•  Accounting (forecasting sales)
•  Human resources management (performance
appraisal)
•  Information systems
•  Economics (summarising, predicting)

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Types of statistics
Why is statistics important?
•  Descriptive statistics:
Ø Collecting, organising, summarising, and presenting data
Ø  E.g: graphical techniques;
numerical techniques
•  Exploratory statistics:
Ø Identifying relationships/associations
Ø  E.g: factor analysis
•  Inferential statistics:
Ø Estimating, predicting, and making decisions about
population based on sample data
Ø  E.g: estimation;
hypothesis testing
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Questions for Data Analysis Basic concepts: variables and data

•  In the descriptive statistics: •  A variable is some characteristics of population or

Ø What is the general pattern of the studied variable sample
Ø Applied for population or sample Ø  Eg:
•  In the exploratory statistics: •  Height of students
Ø What is the relationship amongst variables? •  Occupation of students upon graduation
Ø Applied for population or sample •  Data are the observed values of a variable
•  In the inferential statistics: Ø  Eg:
Ø What can we infer for the population based on sample •  Height of 10 students: 1.6, 1.7, 1.55, 1.59, 1.5, 1.58,
results
1.64, 1.67, 1.58, 1.55
Ø Applied for population
•  Occupation of 5 students: teller, accountant, IT,
marketing manager, teacher
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 Types of data Qualitative data (Categorical data)
•  Qualitative is the kind of data that cannot be measured
(quantified)
Data •  Marital status: single, married, divorced, and widowed
•  Study performance of students: poor, fair, good, very good,
excellent
•  More classification: qualitative data can be classified as
Quantitative Nominal and Ordinal data
Qualitative (also called §  Nominal data: cannot be quantified with any meaningful
Interval) unit
- Marital status: single, married, divorced, and widowed
§  Ordinal data: a sort of nominal data but their values are
in order
Ordinal Continuous
Nominal Discrete -  Study performance of students: poor, fair, good, very good,
excellent
-  Opinions of consumers: strongly disagree, somewhat disagree,
neither disagree nor agree, agree, strongly agree
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Quantitative data (Interval data) Activity 1

•  Quantitative data are real number (can be measured)
Ø  Eg:
•  Mid-term test marks of 10 students: 7, 8, 10, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 7 •  For each of the following examples of data, determine
•  Weights of postal packages the type:
•  Monthly salary i.  The number of miles joggers run per week
•  More classification: quantitative data can be divided into two
types: discrete or continuous ii. The starting salaries of graduates of advanced program
–  Discrete data: take only integer value iii. The months in which a firm’s employees choose to take
Ø  Eg: their vacations
•  Number of children in family: 1, 2, 4, 7, 2 iv. The occupation of graduates of Advanced Program
•  Number of owned houses
v. Teachers’ ranking
–  Continuous data: can take any value
Ø  Eg:
•  Weights of postal packages
•  Monthly salary

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Data sources Sources of secondary data

•  Internet research
•  Based on the method of collecting information, •  Search through Vietcombank website (www.vietcombank.com.vn) to
know the exchange rate
data can be classified as Primary and Secondary •  Search through Google to gather information about the performance
of private firms in Vietnam since ‘Doi moi’
–  Primary data: collected by the organisation itself for
the particular purpose •  Government data and official publications
•  The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam provides all socio-
Ø Eg: you need to know the consumer’s behaviour of economic information (www.gso.gov.vn)
Techcombank, then collect this information yourself •  Data from surveys carried out by GSO and other organisations
•  The Ministry of Finance (www.mof.gov.vn) provides information on
–  Secondary data: collected by other organisations for budget statement
other purposes •  Internal and by-product data: data collected from different departments
Ø Eg: the Vietnam household living standards survey in in an organisation and used all together
2010 •  Data from Sale Department, Human resource Department => decision
making

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 Population
•  Population is a set of all items or people that share
some common characteristics
Ø A census is obtained by collecting information
about every member of a population
Basic concepts: population and sample
- Collect the height of Vietnamese citizens
- Verify the quality of all products that are produced by
factory X

•  Parameter: a descriptive measure of a population

(µ , σ 2 )
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Sample Reasons to take sample (1)

•  A sample is a smaller group of the population. •  A census can give accurate data but population is so
large
Ø A sample survey is obtained by collecting
information of some members of the population
- Collect the height of 1,000 Vietnamese citizens
- Verify the quality of a proportion of products that are
produced by factory X
•  Statistics: a descriptive measure of a sample
(x, s 2 ) Ø Collecting information from the entire population is
•  Sampling: taking a sample from the population time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes
impossible.
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Reasons to take sample (2) Important requirements

•  If we are willing to accept less than 100% accuracy,
we collect information from a sample, calculate its Ø A sample must be representative for the
statistics and use statistical inference to infer values
population. That means the profile of the
of parameters of the population
sample is the same as that of the population
•  We can do this because: a certain sample size => apply sampling techniques
ensures that results from the sample are as accurate
as those of the population Ø The sample size is large enough
•  And benefits of sample: sample allows to investigate
more detailed information

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 Moving from population to sample The second requirements
Ø The sample size is large enough

Ø This question will be answered in lecture 7

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Getting acquainted with SPSS

•  Import the file ‘assignment 1 data set.xls’ into
SPSS and get familiar with SPSS.

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