Richard N Landers - A Step-by-Step Introduction to Statistics for Business

by
Richard n Landers

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Richard N. Landers 2013

First published 2013

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947528

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4462-0820-5
ISBN 978-1-4462-0821-2 (pbk)

LIST OF CONTENTS

For Amy, Neko and Mia (in that order)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank and acknowledge the contributions of Dr Amy Landers, who provided constant feedback, constructive criticism, administrative support and a shocking number of competency test questions. Second, I would like to thank the 14 anonymous reviewers who provided feedback at various stages of writing. Third, I would like to thank my editors for managing the entire confusing process of creating a new text. It takes a village, as they say.

The Publishers would like to extend their warmest thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable feedback on the proposal and draft material.

Khaled Abdala, Lecturer, University of Essex.

Anna Conte, Research Associate, Max Planck Institute of Economics and Senior Lecturer, Westminster Business School.

John Croucher, Professor, Macquarie University.

Carlos Cortinhas, Senior Lecturer, Exeter University Business School.

Glyn Davis, Principal Lecturer, Teesside University Business School.

Richard McGowan, S.J., Professor, Boston College.

PingPing Meckel, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University.

Nandish Patel, Lecturer, Brunel University.

Mike Racer, Associate Professor, University of Memphis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard N. Landers is an Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, which is the scientific application of psychological theory to the practices of human resources and organizational behaviour. He has been teaching undergraduate statistics since the summer of his second year of graduate study, which was driven by his completion of a doctoral supporting programme in organizational research methods and statistics. His academic research is focused on the application of technology to improve employee selection, employee training and higher education. He currently focuses on web-based training programmes, online social media, the gamification of work processes, 3D virtual worlds and online test security. He has presented his work at several national and international conferences, including the Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, and his work has been featured in Forbes and the Chronicle of Higher Education . He has published in numerous journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology , the International Journal of Selection and Assessment, Behavior Research Methods and Computers in Human Behavior . He also currently writes a science popularization blog, neoacademic.com, sharing news on employee selection and training, new technology, I/O psychology research and higher education.

GUIDED TOUR

What you will learn and Data skills you will master from this chapter Highlights everything you will understand and be able to do with data, by the end of this chapter.

Case Study A real-world example of a business problem that needs to be solved with statistics.

@ icon Leads you to the companion website where you can find datasets and videos related to the text.

Foundation Concepts Revises what you should already know from the previous chapter.

Annotated Formulae So you can see at a glance what the symbols mean.

Test Yourself To make sure you have understood what you have just read.