Data-Driven Business Decisions

To the Student

The book is divided into 20 limited but substantial topics. Each topic should not take more than a couple of hours for an intelligent person to digest, even if you have never done quantitative analysis before. Keep in mind, though, that you need to properly understand each topic before you move on. Almost every topic in the book depends critically on, and will refer to, earlier topics in the book.

The material for this book is best viewed electronically. Ideally, you will want to have the data sets open as you read the text so that you can confirm the calculations being presented. For your convenience, the 20 topics on the CDROM correspond to the 20 chapters of the book. Within each topic you will find Excel files that are described and analyzed in the text, short exercises called Check Your Understanding, solutions to these exercises, and one or more cases that illustrate the methods of that chapter (as well as earlier chapters).

There is some software that you will want to install as early in the course as you can. Both are Excel add-ons: StatproGo is for regression, and Treeplan is for decision trees. StatproGo is provided in the CDROM. An academic version of Treeplan is available for very little cost at http://www.treeplan.com/. Since the Mac version of Microsoft Office does not allow add-ins, you will have to run Office in Windows to get much out of this book. Most Mac machines can easily emulate Windows these days, but if you are a Mac lover, keep in mind that ...