Business Statistics for Competitive Advantage with Excel 2010

Book Preface

Exceptional managers know that they can create competitive advantages by basing decisions on performance response under alternative scenarios. To create these advantages, managers need to understand how to use statistics to provide this information. Statistics are created to make better decisions. Statistics are essential and relevant, and they must be easily and quickly produced using widely available software such as Excel. Then results must be translated into general business language and illustrated with compelling graphics to make them understandable and usable by decision makers. This book helps students master this process of using statistics to create competitive advantages as decision makers.

Statistics are essential, relevant, easy to produce, easy to understand, valuable, and fun when used to create competitive advantage.

The Examples, Assignments, and Cases Used to Illustrate Statistics for Decision Making Come from Business Problems

McIntire corporate sponsors and partners, such as Rolls-Royce, Procter & Gamble, Dell, and the industries that they do business in, provide many realistic examples.

The book also features a number of examples of global business problems, including those from important emerging markets in China and India. Students are excited when statistics are used to study real and important business problems. This makes it easy to see how they will use statistics to create competitive advantages in their internships and careers.

Learning Is Hands On with Excel and Shortcuts

Each type of analysis is introduced with one or more examples. Following is an example of how to create the statistics in Excel and what the numbers mean in English.

Included in Excel sections are screenshots that allow students to easily master Excel. Featured are a number of popular Excel shortcuts, which are, themselves, a competitive advantage.

Powerful PivotTables and PivotCharts are introduced early and used throughout the book. Results are illustrated with graphics from Excel.

In each chapter, assignments or cases are included to allow students to practice using statistics for decision making and competitive advantage. Beginning in Chap. 9, Harvard Business School cases are suggested, which provide additional opportunities to use statistics to advantage.