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Statistics for Decision- Making in Business - Maricopa Community ...

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Account Type Revenue ($)<br />

New $5,296<br />

Old $2,230<br />

Old $7,643<br />

Old $3,897<br />

Old $9,590<br />

Old $2,689<br />

Old $5,890<br />

Old $9,561<br />

New $3,643<br />

New $8,861<br />

Old $3,946<br />

Your goal is to summarize the data <strong>in</strong> some mean<strong>in</strong>gful way(s). Descriptive statistics is the<br />

method of describ<strong>in</strong>g or summariz<strong>in</strong>g data. How could this be done<br />

We first consider the types of variables we have present:<br />

Account type – Categorical<br />

o New, Old<br />

<br />

Revenue – Quantitative<br />

o Range from $2,230 to $9,590<br />

With categorical variables, we cannot mathematically manipulate the observed values, or<br />

observations (here we have “New” and “Old” <strong>for</strong> observations). We can only provide<br />

descriptions of the values.<br />

We can provide the relative frequency of these values. A relative frequency is a ratio of the<br />

number of observations of a given value to the total number of observations. Here, we could<br />

summarize by say<strong>in</strong>g:<br />

Account Type Relative Frequency<br />

New<br />

Old<br />

This allows us to conclude that 27% of the sales came from new clients while 73% came from<br />

exist<strong>in</strong>g clients. This is very valuable <strong>in</strong><strong>for</strong>mation! This <strong>in</strong><strong>for</strong>mation demonstrates that the<br />

company has grown over the course of this one day.<br />

We could present these two descriptive statistics to management by either provid<strong>in</strong>g the raw<br />

percentages, or by some visual display, such as a pie chart or a bar graph. A pie chart shows<br />

the ratios (or all parts of one whole) of the categorical variable and thus the entire circle<br />

represents 100% of all account types (100% of the categorical variable values):<br />

<strong>Statistics</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Decision</strong>-<strong>Mak<strong>in</strong>g</strong> <strong>in</strong> Bus<strong>in</strong>ess © Milos Podmanik Page 13

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