101 Books on Business Statistics

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What Is Statistics?

Modern age is the age of statistics. H.G Well’s prediction that “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write,” has become true. Today our culture has become a statistical culture. Every citizen finds statistics in newspapers, magazines, advertisements in T.V and radio etc. The figures relating to the various aspects of his life-social, political and economic – represent and support the observed facts or situations. The reader analyses the figures and arrives at certain conclusions.

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For example, a prospective investor is interested in the profitability of the business enterprise and in its ability to meet debt obligations. He analyses the income statement and balance sheet of the enterprise for a number of years. Such analysis helps him to decide whether to invest or not.

Moreover, many have seen statistics as a device to achieve the degree of precisions in the concept and theories of social science. In nut shell, if we analyze the way in which statistics is looked at, we broadly find two categories, one refers statistics as a set a set of figures and the other connotes it as a set of techniques.

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The work statistics has been derived from the Latin word “status” or the Italian word “Statista”. Both the words mean a ‘Political State’. In the early years, “Statistics” means a collection of facts about the state of the people in the state for political purposes. Thus it helped in collecting data about economic and social conditions of people living in different parts of the country. For proper functioning of the state, it is essential to know the conditions, under which the people live and work, earn income and spend their wealth. This science was known as science of the state.

In this ways statistics developed as a “King Subject” or as a “Science of Kings” or Political Arithmetic.

But with the passage of time, the scope of statistics widened. For some time, Statistics was regarded as a branch of Economics but now it has become a full-fledged independent subject. In the present times, Statistics is not only a science of the state but it also includes in it all types of quantitative analysis.

In plural sense statistics means the systematic collection of numerical facts and in singular sense, it is the science of collecting, classifying and using statistics.

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It is not an easy job to define statistics. The reason behind that no two statisticians agree on the limits and scopes of statistics. According to dictionary meaning of Statistics – it refers to the singular sense where as numerical fate refers to the plural sense.

For a layman, Statistics are only mass of figures. To understand what statistics is, we should define it in way different authors have defined it and then to conclude its definition.

Accordion to Horace Secrist: “By statistics we mean aggregate of facts affected to a market extent by multiplicity of causes, numerically expressed, enumerated or estimated according to reasonable standard of accuracy, collected in a systematic manner for a predetermined purpose and placed in relation to each other.”