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ECN 221
Business Statistics / Week 1 / Lecture 1 / Module 1

Introduction to Data and Statistics

§ The discipline of statistics deals with the collection, display and

analysis of data.

§ A statistic is a function of the data. For example, the maximum is

a statistic.

§ Data are facts that we observe.

Applications

§ Statistics and Data analysis have many uses in business.

§ Pricing decisions.
§ Product design.
§ Marketing decisions.
§ Production decisions.

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Data

§ Data are the facts we observe.

§ A data set is a collection of these facts.

§ For example if we are studying stock prices we might construct a

data set that has companies, closing stock prices on a specific
date, and the market on which the stock is traded.

§ See example on next slide.

Company Closing Price (July 2, 2018) Stock Market

American Express $98.98 NYSE
SYSCO $67.95 NYSE
Google $1142.11 NASDAQ
Coca Cola $132.76 NASDAQ
Balfour Beatty $3.66 LSE

Data

A data set will involve,

§ Elements: the units on which the data are collected. The
companies are the elements.

§ Variables: the characteristics of interest. Price and stock market

are variables in the example.

§ Observations: the group of measurements for an element. Each

element will have one observation.

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Company Closing Price (July 2, 2018) Stock Market

American Express $98.98 NYSE
SYSCO $67.95 NYSE
Google $1142.11 NASDAQ
Coca Cola $132.76 NASDAQ
Balfour Beatty $3.66 LSE

The observation for Balfour Beatty (and the other companies)

has two measurements, one for the variable closing price and
one for stock market.

Check your understanding: