Applied Business Forecasting and Regression Analysis Introduction

Statistics is a discipline of scientific reasoning under conditions of uncertainty. It has to do with: – Designing a appropriate data-collection strategy or an experiment. – Making sense of the collected information through – Plots and tables – Numerical summaries – Make inference about a population from a relatively small random sample of that population. – Modeling the relationship between variables and if it proves successful use it for prediction. – Using historical data to develop models for forecasting the future. – Reporting the results of your statistical analysis. This is not a mathematics course, but mathematical concepts will be used.

Introduction You will find that statistical thinking a new and different type of mental discipline. It will take some time and effort to get comfortable with it. You will not be able to learn this material passively, any more than you could learn to play piano or football just by watching someone else do it.

Introduction Expect this course to be challenging but interesting (I hope). In every lecture, I will follow the textbook fairly closely, but expect to find something extra that you will not find in the text. You will be responsible for these in exams and other class work.

Introduction There will be worksheets in some lectures to go over in class. The work you do on these will be extra credit. You will lose your opportunity to earn extra credit if you miss a class. Some of the problems on these worksheets will closely resemble the homework problems, and problems on the tests.

The organization of this course The lectures, homework assignments, work- sheets, and computer lab sessions are all carefully planned to support each other and to prepare you for exams. The disruption of the timing of any of these course components, will significantly reduce your chances of success in this course.

The organization of this course Alternatively, attending lectures, and working on assigned home-work problems regularly, will increase your chances of success in this course.

How this course works A “cookbook approach” in which you try to memorize the right formula for a word problem will not help you to succeed in this course. Instead, thinking things through from the beginning of the course and understanding the concepts will pay big dividends by the end of the semester.

How this course works Statistics is often thought of as a math course, but in reality English is at least as important as math. We use English to interpret the meaning of numbers we calculate and writing a report of our findings. Difficulty with “word problems” in previous math courses does not inhibit your success in DS-303 because the concepts we need are built from the very beginning of the course.

How this course works I have noted that students who work alone sometimes feel isolated and struggle with the course. Students who work together with a study partner or in a study group tend to succeed more readily. If you miss a lecture, get the notes from your study partner.

How this course works All the lecture notes will be posted on the course web page. It is your responsibility to make your own copies.

What can we hope to accomplish? To learn several commonly used statistical procedures for organizing and describing data. To learn the formal methods for drawing conclusions from properly produced data and use the language of probability to describe how reliable the conclusions are. To learn methods of inference dealing with relationship among two or more variables.

What can we hope to accomplish? To learn time series models used in identifying patterns and their applications in forecasting procedures. To gain practical experience through hands on use of computer programs in your study of these statistical methods. To learn the basics of writing a statistical analysis report.

What to expect You learn statistics by doing statistical problems. To learn a new concept and master it you need to – Be persistent – Be organized – Practice, practice, practice The gain will be worth the pain.