The eighth edition of this book has been revised and updated to provide students with improved problem contexts for learning how statistical methods can improve their analysis and understanding of business and economics. The objective of this revision is to provide a strong core textbook with new features and modifications that will provide an improved learning environment for students entering a rapidly changing technical work environment. This edition has been carefully revised to improve the clarity and completeness of explanations. This revision recognizes the globalization of statistical study and in particular the global market for this book.

    This edition devotes considerable effort to providing an understanding of statistical methods and their applications. We have avoided merely providing rules and canned computer routines for analyzing and solving statistical problems. This edition contains a complete discussion of methods and assumptions, including computational details expresses in clear and complete formulas. Through examples and extended chapter applications, we provide guidelines for interpreting results and explain how to determine if additional analysis is required.

    The development of the many procedures included under statistical inference and regression analysis are built on a strong development of probability and random variables, which are a foundation for the applications presented in this book. The foundation also includes a clear and complete discussion of descriptive statistics and graphical approaches. These provide important tools for exploring and describing data that represent a process being studied.

Chapter 1 Using Graphs to Describe Data
Chapter 2 Using Numerical Measures to Describe Data
Chapter 3 Elements of Chance: Probability Methods
Chapter 4 Discrete Probability Distributions
Chapter 5 Continuous Probability Distributions
Chapter 6 Distributions of Sample Statistics
Chapter 7 Confidence Interval Estimation: One Population
Chapter 8 Confidence Interval Estimation: Further Topics
Chapter 9 Hypothesis Tests of a Single Population
Chapter 10 Two Population Hypothesis Tests
, etc.