An Introduction to Statistical Methods

Excerpt from An Introduction to Statistical Methods: A Textbook for College Students, a Manual for Statisticians and Business Executives

The following chapters are an attempt to work out an introductory, but at the same time a comprehensive, text on statistical methods for the use of college students and students in colleges of business administration. They are also intended to supply the need for a fundamental treatment of the methods of statistical investigation and interpretation. Statistical methods are regarded as means rather than as ends, as constituting simply one phase of general methodology, and as including not only methods of analyzing but also of collecting and assembling statistical data. The methods discussed are of general application although the illustrations, for the most part, are drawn from economic and business fields.

The order of treatment is the same as that followed in the planning and analysis of a statistical problem, and it is hoped that statisticians, business executives, and students of statistical methods generally will find the volume not only a compendium of statistical procedure but also a guide in the process of logical statistical analysis. Emphasis is given to the necessity of a clear formulation of the problem in mind, to the meaning, collecting, and assembling of data, and to the necessity of a rigid interpretation and use of units of measurements. All of these steps are held to be preliminary but indispensable to the formulation of a statistical judgment, and to the employment of the refinements of mathematical analysis which alone are too generally associated with "statistical methods."

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