Business Statistics

Unit code: BEO1106 | Study level: Undergraduate
12
(Generally, 1 credit = 10 hours of classes and independent study.)
City Campus
Footscray Park
Online Real Time
VU Sydney
N/A
Overview
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Overview

This unit is designed to prepare students for studies in Business with appropriate basic knowledge, skills and understanding so that they become familiar with terminology and statistical concepts, and are able to apply these at an elementary level. Furthermore, students completing the unit successfully will be prepared for further statistical knowledge developed in the context of specialised electives. They will be familiar with statistical terminology and well prepared to develop specific statistical techniques at more advanced levels if required to do so.



To this end, students will be encouraged to explore a broad range of techniques during each teaching session and will be trained to pinpoint a specific statistical method to analyse a given business problem. Students will be introduced to: the rationale to apply statistics to business decisions and describing economic data by applying appropriate statistical techniques. Topics include: probability and probability distributions; normal probability distribution; sampling distributions and parameter estimation; hypotheses testing; linear regression and correlation; time-series analysis and forecasting; index numbers. Use will be made of a statistical computer package. The successful completion of the unit will enable students to visualise the business world from a scientific and quantitative perspective and will equip students to minimise the risk of subjective decision.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

  1. Identify business and economic data graphically and numerically. Explain relationships between graphs and numerical data. Explain the relationships between statistics and elementary probability;
  2. Distinguish distributions drawn from discrete and continuous data, e.g. binomial and normal distributions;
  3. Generate forecasts in business and economic contexts;
  4. Apply appropriate software such as Excel in modelling and problem solving;
  5. Predict relevant relations between economic variables using regression models;
  6. Formulate and explain a hypothesis arising out of a given regression model; and,
  7. Undertake calculations to support statistical methods.

Study as a single unit

This unit can be studied on its own, without enrolling in a full degree.

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Assessment

For Melbourne campuses

Assessment type: Test
|
Grade: 15%
In-class quizzes - 3 progressive assessments (3 x 5%)
Assessment type: Test
|
Grade: 20%
Progressive In-class tests (2 x 10%)
Assessment type: Project
|
Grade: 35%
Assignment - 3 progressive assessments (5%, 15%, 15%)
Assessment type: Project
|
Grade: 30%
Case Studies

Other locations

For students studying at VU Sydney, Central University of Finance and Economics, Henan University, Liaoning University, National School of Business Management, Colombo, Sunway College Johor Bahru
Assessment type: Test
|
Grade: 15%
Test (1 hour)
Assessment type: Assignment
|
Grade: 35%
Portfolio of 7 tasks
Assessment type: Examination
|
Grade: 50%
Final examination (2.5 hours)

Required reading

Selected readings will be made available via the unit VU Collaborate site.

As part of a course

This unit is studied as part of the following course(s):

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