Business Statistics: A First Course

Professors Norean Sharpe (Georgetown University), Dick De Veaux (Williams College), and Paul Velleman (Cornell University) have taught at the finest business schools and draw on their consulting experience at leading companies to show readers how statistical thinking is vital to modern decision making. Managers make better business decisions when they understand statistics, and Business Statistics gives readers the statistical tools and understanding to take them from the classroom to the boardroom. Hundreds of examples are based on current events and timely business topics. Short, accessible chapters allow for flexible coverage of important topics, and the conversational writing style maintains readers’ interest and improves understanding.

Norean Sharpe (Ph.D. University of Virginia), as a researcher of statistical problems in business and a professor at a business school, understands the challenges and specific needs of the business student. She is currently teaching at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she is also Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Programs. Prior to joining Georgetown, she taught business statistics and operations research courses to both undergraduates and MBAs for fourteen years at Babson CollegeShe is the recipient of the 2008 Women Who Make a Difference Award for female faculty at Babson. Prior to joining Babson, she taught statistics and applied mathematics courses for several years at Bowdoin College. Norean is coauthor of the recent text, A Casebook for Business Statistics: Laboratories for Decision Making, and has authored over 30 articles-primarily in the areas of statistics education and women in science. Norean currently serves as Associate Editor for CAUSE (Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education) and Associate Editor for the journal Cases in Business, Industry, and Government Statistics. Her research focuses on business forecasting and statistics education.

Richard D. De Veaux (Ph.D. Stanford University) is an internationally known educator, consultant, and lecturer. Dick has taught Statistics at a business school (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), an engineering school (Princeton University) and a liberal arts college (Williams College). He is an internationally known lecturer in data mining and is a consultant for many Fortune 500 companies in a wide variety of industries. While at Princeton, he won a Lifetime Award for Dedication and Excellence in Teaching. Since 1994, he has been a Professor of Statistics at Williams College. Dick holds degrees from Princeton University in Civil Engineering and Mathematics, and from Stanford University in Dance Education and Statistics, where he studied with Persi Diaconis. His research focuses on the analysis of large data sets and data mining in science and industry. Dick has won both the Wilcoxon and Shewell awards from the American Society for Quality and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Dick is well known in industry, having consulted for such companies as American Express, Hewlett-Packard, Alcoa, DuPont, Pillsbury, General Electric, and Chemical Bank. He was named the “Statistician of the Year” for 2008 by the Boston Chapter of the American Statistical Association for his contributions to teaching, research, and consulting. In his spare time he is an avid cyclist and swimmer. He also is the founder and bass for the Doo-wop group, “Diminished Faculty,” and is a frequent soloist with various local choirs and orchestras. Dick is the father of four children.

Paul F. Velleman (Ph.D. Princeton University) has an international reputation for innovative statistics education. He designed the Data Desk® software package and is also the author and designer of the award-winning ActivStats® statistics package, for which he received the EDUCOM Medal for innovative uses of computers in teaching statistics and the ICTCM Award for Innovation in Using Technology in College Mathematics. He is the founder and CEO of Data Description, Inc. (www.datadesk.com), which supports both of these programs. He also developed the Internet site, Data and Story Library (DASL) (dasl.datadesk.com), which provides data sets for teaching Statistics.