Business Statistics.

Business Statistics, Naval Bajpai, Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2009, Pages 794, Price Rs.450/-

The primary goal of any Business Statistics text book is to help students learn and understand statistical methods and that how these methods can be used for decision making. This Business Statistic book by Professor Naval Bajpai is written using simple language and avoids use of complicated mathematical symbols & derivations. The author has focused on applications of statistics in varied business situations thus making it an interesting reading for business management students many of whom are from non-mathematics background. The book comprises nineteen chapters. The first chapter introduces students to basic concepts of statistics and starts with a roadmap to learning statistics which can be used to understand the big picture of statistics. Also, three popularly used software in statistics-MS-Excel, Minitab and SPSS are also introduced towards the end of this chapter.

Chapter 2 -4 cover descriptive statistics. Chapter 5 introduces basic concepts of probability and also lays a platform for discrete and continuous probability distributions covered in Chapter 6 and 7 respectively. The next chapter introduces sampling and sampling distributions and provides an answer to an important query-how to obtain the data needed for statistical analysis? Chapter 9-12 discuss statistical inference, hypothesis testing and ANOVA. The Chi-square test for hypothesis testing for categorical data is explained in Chapter 13. Chapter14-15 cover single and multiple regressions respectively for making predictions about a dependent variable. Time series analysis as an important forecasting technique is detailed out in Chapter 16. An application of statistical tools in quality control - SQC techniques are the focus of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 covers non-parametric tests and the last chapter explains statistical decision theory-an analytical and systematic approach to decision making to arrive at the best possible alternative out of several feasible and viable ones.

The book can be used by students of Business Statistics as well as by practicing managers. Every chapter has numerous solved problems all coming from Indian business context, which definitely helps students connect theory with practice. Also, wherever required, the business implications of the results obtained from solved exercises have been discussed. The case studies at the end of chapters make use of real data sourced from organizations like www.indiastat.com, Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy etc. One very attractive feature of the book is that it contains directions (with dialog boxes) for using three popularly used software programs for statistical analyses - MS-Excel, Minitab and SPSS-giving enough information to produce the same statistical outputs analyzed and discussed in each chapter.

However, there are a few suggestions especially if the book is to be recommended as a text book. A few more unsolved exercises can be added in each chapter and answers to selected exercises can be included. Case-11 has a question requiring the interpretation of Minitab output. Similar exercises, both solved and unsolved, related to interpretation of outputs can be included. Overall, the book definitely is a useful addition to the area of Business Statistics.

Neeta Gupta

Adjunct Faculty

FORE School of Management