Rice University - Basic Data Descriptors, Statistical Distributions, and Application to Business Decisions 

Module 1: Basic Data Descriptors

In this module you will get to understand, calculate and interpret various descriptive or summary measures of data. These descriptive measures summarize and present data using a few numbers. Appropriate Excel functions to do these calculations are introduced and demonstrated.

Topics covered include:

Categories of descriptive data

Measures of central tendency, the mean, median, mode, and their interpretations and calculations

Measures of spread-in-data, the range, interquartile-range, standard deviation and variance

Box plots

Interpreting the standard deviation measure using the rule-of-thumb and Chebyshev?s theorem

Module 2: Descriptive Measures of Association, Probability, and Statistical Distributions

This module presents the covariance and correlation measures and their respective Excel functions. You get to understand the notion of causation versus correlation. The module then introduces the notion of probability and random variables and starts introducing statistical distributions.

Topics covered include:

Measures of association, the covariance and correlation measures; causation versus correlation

Probability and random variables; discrete versus continuous data

Introduction to statistical distributions

Module 3: The Normal Distribution

This module introduces the Normal distribution and the Excel function to calculate probabilities and various outcomes from the distribution.

Topics covered include:

Probability density function and area under the curve as a measure of probability

The Normal distribution (bell curve), NORM.DIST, NORM.INV functions in Excel