Business Statistics: A First Course

David M. Levine, Kathryn A. Szabat, and David F. Stephan are all experienced business school educators committed to innovation and improving instruction in business statistics and related subjects.

David Levine, Professor Emeritus of Statistics and CIS at Baruch College, CUNY is a nationally recognized innovator in statistics education for more than three decades. Levine has coauthored 14 books, including several business statistics textbooks; textbooks and professional titles that explain and explore quality management and the Six Sigma approach; and, with David Stephan, a trade paperback that explains statistical concepts to a general audience. Levine has presented or chaired numerous sessions about business education at leading conferences conducted by the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and the American Statistical Association, and he and his coauthors have been active participants in the annual DSI Making Statistics More Effective in Schools and Business (MSMESB) mini-conference. During his many years teaching at Baruch College, Levine was recognized for his contributions to teaching and curriculum development with the College’s highest distinguished teaching honor. He earned B.B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from CCNY. and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research from New York University.

As Associate Professor and Chair of Business Systems and Analytics at La Salle University, Kathryn Szabat has transformed several business school majors into one interdisciplinary major that better supports careers in new and emerging disciplines of data analysis including analytics.  Szabat strives to inspire, stimulate, challenge, and motivate students through innovation and curricular enhancements, and shares her coauthors’ commitment to teaching excellence and the continual improvement of statistics presentations. Beyond the classroom she has provided statistical advice to numerous business, nonbusiness, and academic communities, with particular interest in the areas of education, medicine, and nonprofit capacity building. Her research activities have led to journal publications, chapters in scholarly books, and conference presentations. Szabat is a member of the American Statistical Association (ASA), DSI, Institute for Operation Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), and DSI MSMESB. She received a B.S. from SUNY-Albany, an M.S. in statistics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. degree in statistics, with a cognate in operations research, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Advances in computing have always shaped David Stephan’s professional life. As an undergraduate, he helped professors use statistics software that was considered advanced even though it could compute only several things discussed in Chapter 3, thereby gaining an early appreciation for the benefits of using software to solve problems (and perhaps positively influencing his grades).  An early advocate of using computers to support instruction, he developed a prototype of a mainframe-based system that anticipated features found today in Pearson’s MathXL and served as special assistant for computing to the Dean and Provost at Baruch College. In his many years teaching at Baruch, Stephan implemented the first computer-based classroom, helped redevelop the CIS curriculum, and, as part of a FIPSE project team, designed and implemented a multimedia learning environment. He was also nominated for teaching honors. Stephan has presented at the SEDSI conference and the DSI MSMESB mini-conferences, sometimes with his coauthors. Stephan earned a B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College and an M.S. from Baruch College, CUNY, and he studied instructional technology at Teachers College, Columbia University.