Business Statistics for Non-Statisticians A Practical Workshop

Business Statistics for Non-Statisticians A Practical Workshop

OBJECTIVES

• To explain the role and importance of data in decision making
• To explain different methods of gathering, analysing, presenting, understanding and interpreting numerical data
• To explain how to avoid some common pitfalls in the presentation and analysis of data
• To explain, use and interpret key management statistics and statistical concepts
• To explain the tools necessary to monitoring process performance and take appropriate improvement/investigative actions
• To explain how to identify and quantify seasonality, trends and other cycles in time series data and so take them into account when predicting future
• To explain how to determine the strength of a linear relationship between two variables

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Professionals, analysts and others who come into contact with data on a regular basis and want to gain a firm grounding in understanding what data are and, just as importantly, are not telling them.

COURSE OUTLINE

Day One

Gathering Data

• Introduction
  • The importance of data in management and decision making
• Types of data
  • Nominal, Ordinal, Continuous and Discrete
  • Primary & Secondary Data
• Sampling
  • The need, advantages and disadvantages of Sampling

• Sampling schemes: Random, Stratified, Systematic, Cluster, Quota, Multistage
• Sampling errors

• Review & wrap up

Day Two

Summarizing and Presenting Data

• Preview
  • The Rods Experiment
• Presentation Tools
  • Data tables, tally charts, histograms, run charts
• Summary statistics 1
  • Mean, mode, median, range, standard deviation, variance
• The normal distribution
  • The foundation of business statistics
• The origin of 6 Sigma
• Capability
  • What it means and how to calculate it
• Summary statistics 2
  • Percentiles, cumulative frequency charts
• Bar charts
  • Stacked and grouped bar charts, Pareto, pie and radar charts
• Review & wrap up

Day Three

Monitoring and Predicting Performance: An Introduction to Control Charts

• Preview
  • The Rods Experiment part 2
• Variation
  • The importance of understanding variation
  • Common and special causes of variation
  • In-control and out-of-control processes
• Process decisions
• When to improvement and when to investigate

• Tampering
  • The result of ignorance of variation
• Control Charts
  • The tool for interpreting process performance
  • How to interpret control charts
  • Action and warning limits Specification limits
  • Predicting the future
• Review & wrap up

Day Four

Time Series: How to Analyze the Past with the aim of Predicting the Future

• Preview
• Index numbers and their use in time series
• Estimating trends
• Extrapolation
  • Use and Risks
• Components of time series
  • Trend, Seasonality and Cycles
• Moving averages
• Determining seasonal effects
• Isolating trends and seasonal effects
• Forecasting
• Review & wrap up

Day Five

Some Common Managerial Errors and Pitfalls: How to Avoid Them

• Preview
• Scatter diagrams and Correlation analysis
  • Common errors that mislead the innocent
• The mis-information in Moving averages
• The difficulty of year to date figures
• The Loss Function and the myth of specification limits
• Review & wrap up