Chapter 1

Data and Statistics

Nguyen Thi Lien
Faculty of Mathematical Economics, NEU
Email: [email protected]

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What are we going to learn?
 Statistics: Applications in Business and Economics
 Data
 Data Sources
 Descriptive Statistics
 Statistical Inference

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Introduction to Statistics
Statistics is a tool to help process, summarize, analyze, and interpret
data to assist in making more effective decisions.

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Introduction to Statistics
Applications in Business and Economics

Accounting: Public accounting firms use statistical sampling procedures when

conducting audits for their clients.

Finance: Financial advisors use a variety of statistical information, including price

earnings ratios and dividend yields, to guide their investment recommendations.

Marketing: Electronic point-of-sale scanners at retail checkout counters are being

used to collect data for a variety of marketing research applications.

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Introduction to Statistics
Applications in Business and Economics

Production: A variety of statistical quality control charts are used to monitor the
output of a production process.

Economics: Economists use statistical information in making forecasts about the

future of the economy or some aspect of it.

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Data and Data Sets
Data are the facts and figures that are collected, summarized, analyzed, and interpreted.

The data collected in a particular study are referred to as the data set.
 The elements are the entities on which data are collected.

 A variable is a characteristic of interest for the elements.

 The set of measurements collected for a particular element is called an observation.

 The total number of data values in a data set is the number of elements multiplied by
the number of variables.
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 Data and Data Sets
Variables

Customer Type of Customer Items Net Sales

A1 Regular 1 39.50 Observation

Element

B2 Promotional 1 102.40

C3 Regular 1 22.50
D4 Promotional 5 100.40
Datum

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Qualitative and Quantitative Data
• Qualitative data: labels or names used to identify an attribute of each element.

• Qualitative data use either the nominal or ordinal scale of measurement.

• Qualitative data can be either numeric or nonnumeric.

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Qualitative and Quantitative Data
• Quantitative data indicate either how many or how much.
 Quantitative data that measure how many are discrete.
 Quantitative data that measure how much are continuous because there is
no separation between the possible values for the data.
• Quantitative data are always numeric.

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Exercise 1.1: Classify these datas
a. Salary
b. Gender
c. The revenue of MP3 players
d. Types of favorite drink
e. Temperature
f. SAT scores
g. Rating of a finance professor
h. Number of households in the city

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Levels of Measurement
Male 1
Qualitative Data

Nominal no logical order

Female 0

Ordinal ranked or ordered

(2) distance between two values

Quantitative Data

Interval two properties:

(3) ordering of values

(1) ratio of two values

Ratio Three properties: (2) distance between two values
(3) ordering of values

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 Exercise 1.2: Levels of Measurement
What is the level of measurement for each of the following variables?

A. student IQ scores

B. distance students travel to class

C. student scores on the first statistics test

D. a classification of students by state of birth

E. a ranking of students as freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior

F. number of hours students study per week

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Data
• Cross-sectional data are collected at the same or approximately the same point
in time.
• Time series data are collected over several time periods.

Cross-sectional Data Time Series Data Panel Data

Time is fixed! Object is fixed! Multi object over time

Eg: 63 provinces’ Eg: Hanoi’s annual Eg: 63 provinces’ annual

economic information economic information economic information
in 2017 from 2000 to 2017 from 2000 to 2017

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Data Sources
Existing Sources Internet Statistical Studies

• Existing within firms • Web site • Experimental

• Available organizations • Providing public • Observational

• Government agencies
• Survey

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Data Sources
Time Requirement
◦ Searching for information can be time consuming.
◦ Information might no longer be useful by the time it is available.
Cost of Acquisition
◦ Organizations often charge for information even when it is not their primary
business activity.
Data Errors
◦ Using any data that happens to be available or that were acquired with little care
can lead to poor and misleading information.

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 Population and Sample
A population A sample
N represents the population size; the n represents the sample size; An observed
collection of all items of interest or under subset of the population
investigation

ef gh i jk l m n g i n
o p q rs t u v w o r u

a specific characteristic is called A parameter a specific characteristic is called A statistic

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Population and Sample
Examples: A research aims to study about students in your university
 Population: All students in your university

 Sample: Some students in your university

 Individual: Each student in your university

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Exercise 1.3
The universe or "totality of items or things" under consideration is called
a. a sample.

b. a population.

c. a parameter.

d. a statistic.

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Exercise 1.4
A summary measure that is computed to describe a characteristic from
only a sample of the population is called
a. a parameter.

b. a census.

c. a statistic.

d. the scientific method.

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Types of Statistics
Descriptive Statistics:
• Collect data (Survey,...)
using the tabular, graphical, and • Present data (Tables and graphs,...)
numerical methods used to • Summarize data (Sample mean,...)
summarize data.

Inferential Statistics:
using data obtained from a sample to • Estimation (Estimate the population
mean weight using the sample mean
make estimates and test hypotheses
weight,...)
about the characteristics of the • Hypothesis testing (Test the claim that
population. the population mean weight is 65kg)

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Exercise 1.5
The process of using sample statistics to draw conclusions about true
population parameters is called
a. statistical inference.

b. the scientific method.

c. sampling.

d. descriptive statistics.

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 End of Chapter 1
 Aplications in business and economics: accounting, finance, marketing,
economics, information systems …
 Data: elements, variables, and observations, scales of measurement,
categorical and quantitative data, cross-sectional and time series data
 Data sources: existing sources, observational study, experiment, time and cost
issues….
 Descriptive statistics vs statistical inference

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